Who is the (real) beast?
by anais.dakota
Summary: Beauty and the Beast, a retelling: Altena saves a girl and winds up trapped in a castle that has kept its inhabitants imprisoned for twenty-eight years. A rose wilts in the tallest tower of the west wing and a nearby town flourishes, but only one knows the truth...and only one can break her spell.
1. Chapter 1

__They say that the castle deep in the forest outside Ajaccio is enchanted. They say that no one who enters it can leave. They say that an evil queen reigns over it, terrible and twisted and dark.__

 _ _They say that she was cursed– by a fairy, by a witch, by another queen. Some whisper that the enchantress had been her own mother, a line of witches rotten to the core. They say that she is just as much a prisoner in her castle as anyone else, and only true love can set her free.__

 _ _They say that she's a beast, belladonna-beautiful on the outside and poison within. They say that she is terrible and evil and twisted within; and that certainly, she will never find that true love that would save her. She will rot in her castle until the last of the enchantment takes hold and then endure forever in despair.__

 _ _For who could ever love a beast?__

* * *

There are few stories that begin with an ending, but our story today must, if it will ever begin. It begins with two endings at once, two hearts wildly beating and then silenced. It begins with a curse- with murder most foul- and it begins with a blessing that costs another her life.

And as a body falls to the floor to an agonized cry, across the woods, in a little village, there's a new cry, tinny and reedy and full of needs that can't be expressed. There's a low __hush, child__ and a midwife gathering a bundle close to her as another gently closes a mother's eyes.

There is a beginning in these endings, after all, as a girl in a castle weeps into her hands and a much smaller girl surveys the world for the first time.

It's the younger girl's story we will hear today.

It's rather grim at first, of course; there's little hope for a child without a mother or father. The midwife keeps her until there's simply not enough food to go around, and then she's sent to a blacksmith without children until his wife is unexpectedly with child.

The little girl learns very young that family is as elusive as magic and can elicit hope and fear in equal measure. The little girl learns that the world is harsh and hard and she will have to be as hard as the world or she will break. The little girl has __angry eyes__ , a kindly villager says, and she simply can't take in a difficult child right now.

The little girl with angry eyes grows up angrier, grows up harder. She scoffs at fairytales and true love and dreams late at night of them all the same. She loses two apprenticeships, learns the vocation of snatch-and-run instead, and finds herself locked in a lord's dungeons at seventeen.

And then something curious happens, the likes of which had never happened before and is in fact enough to make her hard eyes widen and falter.

The little girl is found by someone who wants her.

"What's your name?" the man inquires, drawing his robe closer to him as he offers the girl a small-lipped smile. He has hard eyes, too, though it isn't anger that makes them hard.

"Altena" the girl says. The lord stands behind the man, bored at the exchange. He calls her __girl__ and __street rat__ and has never once asked for the name etched on a blanket she'd left in the woods before she'd been caught. "Just Altena"

"Altena" the man repeats, and his eyes are cool as he turns away. Altena sags. But the man says, "I will take her as a part of my price."

"A part!" the lord echoes, and there is haggling and threats and a whisper of something that might be magic in the air. Altena stands white-knuckled and wipes her thoughts blank of emotion until she's stumbling beside the man's rapid clip and the sun is beating down on her prison-pale skin.

"I don't know what you think I can do," she says quickly, determined not to hope when she knows where that always ends. "I never completed an apprenticeship. I don't have __any__ money. I don't even have any clothing. My last mother said that I'm 'useless'. I don't know what you think I can do," she says again.

The man turns to face her, his eyes glinting. "Can you steal for me, Altena?"

"Oh." Altena watches him warily, expecting a trap. But there is only silence and expectation. "What do you want me to steal?"

"People," the man says, and thus begins the chapter of the little girl with angry eyes and Laurent Bouquet.

* * *

Now, while you and I might have seen this as the beginning of a fairytale, Altena had had less grandiose expectations of a rags-to-riches story. She had met few kind people in this world and even fewer who would spirit a girl like her from prison for noble purposes, and she had already begun to steel for the worst when she'd met Laurent Bouquet.

She'd thought he might traffic in people in the worst of ways, enslave young women or carry out kidnapping plots for the children of local lords. She'd been sure that she'd have to run or risk doing something unforgivable. Altena had never believed in fairytales, and she'd known better than to believe that one had stumbled across her now.

But Laurent, as it winds up, is as close to a royal as there could ever be in Storybrooke (excepting the queen that supposedly lives in the nearby woods). He governs his villages with an iron fist, and he has no tolerance for criminals or murderers in his midst. And all kings need thieves of their own, of course, because they can rarely be bothered to dirty their skirts with criminal chases.

This isn't to say that Laurent Bouquet is a noble or good king, and Altena knows that from the start. He is cruel and harsh, a king who rules by fear and shows only calculated kindness. But he's earned Altena's loyalty from the start, and Altena is wary but grateful regardless.

Eight years pass in this way, with very little to report to you, my dear reader, beyond the humdrum of everyday work. And Altena works quite a bit. Here are some things that she excels at: finding runners who violate Laurent's laws; seducing men and women, she preferred the women, into imprisonment; maneuvering around Laurent at her most dangerous.

Here are some things that Altena does not excel at: bringing in impoverished villagers who raise Laurent's ire when they can no longer pay taxes to him; controlling her temper when Laurent finds fault with this; making friends.

"Someday, you'll find your true love, too," a woman had said to her desperately as Emma had dragged her into her carriage. "You'll understand then."

"If you have to kill his wife for it, is it really true love?" Emma had slammed the door shut and locked it, scoffing to herself.

"That's the best kind of true love," Laurent's deputy says, smirking at her. He's a man who fancies himself , even though he was not very good looking and had nearly drowned the last time he'd proposed to her and she'd shoved him into the lake. Vincent has it in his head that they're going to wind up lovers or married, no matter how many times she's had to inform him that they aren't __engaged__.

"True love is a heaping pile of manure," Altena says pleasantly, and when Vincent slings his hand around her shoulders, she leans back a step, twists her shoulders, and sends him tumbling into a stinking pile of said manure by the side of the road.

Altena, you see, has very little patience for affectations like __true love__. Love ends with rejection or despair or selfishness, she thinks, and none of that is true. Love is a useless delusion of attraction for which she has no patience.

Does she know of the full story of the queen in the castle just yet? We can't say for sure. Perhaps she'd overheard it from gossiping villagers, or from Laurent's odd assistant, a doctor. Knowing Altena as we do by now, I can't imagine that she'd paid it any mind if she had heard it.

The one thing she certainly knows: Never set foot into the castle in the woods, or you will never escape it.

Everyone knows that, though few have ever stumbled across the castle. There had been an old story of a man whose body had been found outside its gates just around when Altena had been plucked from prison, his body half-devoured by wolves. __By the queen__ , some had whispered instead, eyes bright with fear and fascination. Altena had been too busy to listen to rumors back then.

You might think by now that she had been hardened even more by her day-to-day life, dealing with Laurent and with cruel, violent people. But somehow, she'd become a curiosity instead, a woman who works for Laurent for eight years and never picked up his cruelty. She would march through the village with a struggling prisoner in front of her and march right back through it to look after young girl with her new baby and hovel. She becomes a fierce protector of the needy, the helpless, the ones who Laurent loathes most. She is __kind__ , some of the villagers insist, and others laugh and laugh until tears stream from their faces at the thought of one of Laurent's entourage being kind.

But Altena, too stubborn to believe in faith or love or dreams, is equally determined to make sure that others believe in all of it instead. It is impossible to resolve the woman who would kill for Laurent with the woman who would hunt down a children's father to return him to them, and so few bother to try.

Laurent Bouquet is derisive but does not interfere. You see, the doctor had foreseen, many years ago, that Altena would be vital to Laurent's life or death someday, though he could not tell him for better or for worse. Laurent is careful to nurture Altena's loyalty but never let her stray too far, lest he lose his tight control over the woman.

For her part, Altena is comfortable with her position and her life as it is. There is a creeping emptiness within her that she never quite resolves, a hole in her heart that had grown and grown since she'd been a child. She covers it up with layers and layers of shields, protects it from the world and from her own thoughts, and she keeps busy so she might never contemplate it.

And so our story takes us to Altena riding through the woods in the rain one evening, out on a manhunt that had taken longer than it should have and left her very irritated. She is irritated as a rule today, rather, though this new inconvenience hasn't improved her mood. Twenty-eight years ago to this day, Altena had lost the only person before Laurent who had wanted her, and each birthday is only a reminder of a woman she could never meet.

Her mark had run off before the rain had begun, fleeing to shelter and leaving Altena with gritted teeth and matted hair, urging her horse through paths in the woods that weren't paths at all. Between the moonless night and the rain, it had taken her nearly an hour before she'd realized just how lost she is, and bites out a curse and rides on.

She'd hoped she might stumble across something familiar, but the trees seem larger and more confusing than ever. There are wolves howling to the moon and sheets of rain beating down on her and she can't see much of anything but the trees directly in front of her.

It comes as a surprise when she looks up and sees, instead of trees, an enormous gate rising in front of her. She squints again, frowns at what can't possibly be real, but it remains ahead of her, partially open and with dim movements near the entrance.

 _ _Impossible__. But then the rain slows for a moment and she sees what is beyond the gate: first, a castle, tall but concealed from the world by the hilly mountains around it. Second and more urgently, she is able to make out what the dim movements are.

Because, of course, it wouldn't be that easy to walk inside a castle where no one can leave. White wolves move through the gates like ghosts in the dark, their low growls finally audible through the rain as they bear down on a figure hanging from the gate.

"Help!" It's the shout of a girl, a child, young and terrified, just within the gates of the castle. She hangs desperately from a pole of the gate while white wolves leap at her. They'd torn her shoes and clothes half off of her and she is bleeding profusely from a wound on her calf, and her hands are slipping against the rain-slicked metal of the gate. "Mama!" she screams. "Help! Mama!" But even Altena, just a few feet away, can hardly hear her. Wherever her mother is, she must have been impeded by the wolves.

And if you've been paying attention to our story by now, you know what Altena's response to a girl in danger would be. It should be no surprise to you that the warnings to never enter the castle barely fly through her mind before she's riding forward, urging her horse into the the pack of wolves and calling out to the girl. "Child!" she shouts, and the girl nearly slips from his position in astonishment. "Hold on!"

"Who __are__ you?" she demands, and Altena ignores her as her horse rears up in protest. __A castle that no one can leave once entered__. The girl's hand slips and she slides down the gate, screaming again as she scrabbles desperately for purchase, and Altena urges her horse on with a slap to his flank and hurtles toward the girl just as she finally falls.

She seizes her by her ripped tunic and yanks her to her, settling her on the horse as she ducks her head. "Get ready," she instructs the girl, and she huddles back against her as she yanks a knife from her boot and swings it at the closest wolf.

It howls in agony, but it doesn't stop snapping at her until her horse makes a mad dash up the path, toward the castle entrance. And then, suddenly, the wolves stop completely. They fade into the dim light, the castle grounds clear and vacant, and not a wolf is in sight anymore. You see, these wolves are guardians, brought in by the curse to keep people __in__ , not out. And Altena and the girl are now firmly inside the castle walls, whether they like it or not.

ALtena, you may recall, has had some experience with prisons, though a dungeon under a lord's home is no comparison to this magnificent castle. Still, she stares at the open gate with a sinking feeling and feels a wave of claustrophobia at the threat of a new imprisonment. But then the girl moans and Altena remembers the bite in her leg. "Let's dress that wound," she says gently, shivering in the rain. She eases her off the horse once they make it to the doors of the castle, hoists her into her arms and stumbles indoors.

She buries her face in her shoulder, a moan of pain slipping from her throat, and Altena feels a twinge of something in her heart that she keeps shielded and refuses to dwell on. "You're going to be okay," she promises the girl. "Whoever lives in this castle must have something to bandage you up with."

She looks around for the first time and immediately regrets that confident assertion. She hadn't considered much about the castle interior before she'd entered it, only that a castle this magnificent without any signs of decay must have been occupied. But instead, they've entered into an opulent grand hall that looks utterly abandoned.

There are cobwebs hanging from the walls, covering the chandelier at the center of the room. Dust mutes the colors of the walls, obscures the image of a woman in a painted glass window above them, is only lightly disturbed on the floor at one end of the staircases that wind around the far side of the hall. There are mirrored suits of armor on the opposite side of the room as the staircase, and even through the dust that coats them, Altena sees a telltale orange flicker. __A fire__. There is someone there, after all, and there is warmth and a fireplace reflected against that coat of armor.

She's still dizzy from her madcap ride through the woods and the rain and the wolves, and maybe that's why she begins to hear what sounds like a low hum of conversation. __Whispers__. They are coming from around her, from places there are no people at all, and the girl hasn't reacted to any of it. She must have been imagining things, hearing voices, and she sighs at herself and takes another step forward–

It's at this moment that I must introduce you and Altena both to a certain two objects bobbing around nervously on the floor. Several minutes before, they hadn't been on the floor at all. They'd been standing on a bookcase in the room where Altena was heading before I pulled you away, whispering furiously to each other.

"A girl!" the first had said, her eyes shining with glee. Most of her shines, as she is a small candelabra as well as being a rather impossible woman by the name of Aurelia. "A woman! Here?"

"The queen won't take kindly to her," the other says warningly. She is called Marie, and had settled into her position as enchanted clock and Aurelia's compatriot with glum resignation. "She shouldn't be here. We'll have to hide her."

" _ _Hide__ her?" Aurelia scoffs. "Hide a woman when we're this close to being–"

"We both know that that's as unlikely as–"

"You getting that stick out of your ass?" the candelabra grumbles.

Marie sighs. "You know Odette. This isn't going to end the way you want it to."

"I can handle Odette," Aurelia says boldly. "We'll show our guest to the sitting room and the rest will work itself out." She sighs, smug again. "Cece, you keep an eye on the little one," she orders a teapot who'd been watching Altena and the girl progress down the hall. "I'll take care of our guest." She hops off the shelf with some difficulty as Marie slides into place beside her on the floor.

And that brings us back to the moment when Altena first meets them both. She stares. They stare back. "What the hell?" she demands, gaping at them and nearly dropping the girl. Altena knows of magic, of course, but very little of it had ever touched her. She's never known enough about it to do more than stay away from a mark with a wand or ask no questions about Laurent's sources or avoid the castle in the woods at all costs, for all the good __that__ had done her. But those…enchanted objects…

Her mouth is still hanging slightly open, and the candelabra tilts its candle downward, extending its– __hands. Those are hands__ – in a sweeping bow. And then it speaks, in an unmistakably feminine voice. "I am Aurelia, at your service. This is Marie," she says, waving to her carelessly. Marie tilts the top of her clock face, eyes wary on Altena. "What can we do for you tonight? You look like a drowned rat. It's very homely. We'll have to fix that," Aurelia says briskly, and Altena's mouth hangs open a little more.

"Did you just…call me ugly? You're a __lamp__."

"I'm a candelabra! How dare you," Aurelia sniffs. "And silver doesn't stay this clear unless there's a genetic predisposition for clear skin, I'll have you know. If you were–"

"Ignore her," Marie says hastily, cutting off the candelabra mid-sentence. Altena squints at her, thoroughly bewildered by them both. "I usually do, and I'm better off for it. That bite looks awful," she says reprovingly, turning to the girl. "What did you do to it?"

She looks sullen in response, burying her face in Altena's shoulder again. Altena swallows her bewilderment and says, "Look, um…Lady Clock. I really need something to bandage it up before any dirt gets into the wound."

"She seems kind." The third voice is a woman as well, a bit less strident than the candelabra's and a bit less dour than the clock's. There is a teapot at the end of the hall, in the cozy little room with the fireplace, and as Altena watches, it pours two teacups and sits back expectantly. "Why don't you have a seat?" she offers.

And so Altena sets the girl down in a large, high-backed chair facing the fire as Marie and Aurelia vanish again in search of bandages for her. The girl hasn't said a word since her screams of __Mama!__ in the rain, and Altena keeps up a steady stream of chatter instead to distract her from the pain. She tells her about her mark, a man who'd been stealing goats from one of the outer edges of Storybrooke, and she tells him about a girl named Dakota just her age who has a mad father and likes to travel with Altena to the market. The girl listens in silence until Altena runs out of words and the bite is properly cleaned and closed, and Altena sits on the floor beside the fireplace, wrapped in a blanket that Marie had found her, and sips at the tea in defeated silence.

This isn't so bad, she decides. Trapped in a castle with a bevy of enchanted objects at her beck and call isn't the worst way to be trapped at all. At least she won't be alone again, and she'll have to find a way to reunite the girl with her mother–

There is a thunderous slam behind her and she jumps, spilling tea all over her bedraggled clothing as she twists around.

Storming into the room, eyes dark and in a gown as magnificent as the castle around them, is the most beautiful woman that Altena has ever seen. Her skin is not much lighter than Altena's, her cheekbones high and sharp, her eyes a soft blue-grey and her blonde hair kept together behind her head like the sort of regal women that poets write epics about. Altena gapes at her, momentarily stunned to stillness, and the woman hurls her across the room with nothing more than a twitch of her fingers.

"What the __hell__ are you doing here?" the woman demands.

"Cece invited her in here," Aurelia says quickly, pointing at the teapot with one lit candle. "Marie and I had nothing to do with it."

"In my castle?" the woman roars, ignoring the candelabra. "In my chair! You dare to invade my home for…what, a sighting of the __beast__? Do you know what I do to people like you?"

"I'm not–" Altena struggles against the magic holding her in place. "I'm not here to look at anything!" The woman's face darkens even more, and Altena swallows. "I don't want to be here at all, so if you could call off your wolves, I'll be on my way!" she grinds out, terrified and angry.

The woman looks unconvinced, eyes flashing. "Liar. Why else would you be here?" she snaps. "Don't you know that no one who enters this castle can leave?"

Altena hesitates, worried about what this terrifying, furious woman might do to the girl still hidden behind the couch. But then, a voice, worn after an injury and a night of terror. "She saved my life, Mama," the girl says, and the woman releases Altena in an instant and flies across the room to the girl.

"Mireille!" she gasps, and Altena sinks to the ground and stares as the woman drops to her knees to cup the girl's face.

Let's rewind, shall we?

We can peer into the everyday lives of Mireille and her mother, locked in a castle prison for the duration of Mireille's young life. We can see her wistfulness and her mother's sorrow at what she's been denied, we can see her face screw up with determination after being told __again__ that she can never even try to leave, we can see her slip out of bed while her mother watches the rain in silence and slide down the banister, tiptoeing past an arguing clock and candelabra to make a break for the gate.

We can try to understand how a woman of such power and rage can be turned to doting mother for a small girl, or we can return to Altena and her flabbergasted bewilderment and learn from the image that she is seeing instead.

The woman strokes Mireille's face with heartbroken, fraught touches, her eyes welling up with tears as she stares at the cuts on her arms and her bandaged legs. She runs her hand over her leg, a shimmer of magic at the tips of her fingers, but nothing happens to the cuts or bite. "Sweetheart, __why__?" she asks er, and she sobs in response, sliding her arms around the woman's neck as though the whole ordeal is only now finally over.

"I just wanted to __try__ , Mama," she whimpers. "I wanted to see if we could be free. If we could– if there could be some way to escape the curse."

"Oh, my darling girl," the woman murmurs, holding him tight. Altena shivers. The empty spot in her heart stings, as it has the tendency to do whenever she sees mothers with their children.

She takes a step back, unwilling to watch any of it, and the woman turns, suddenly reminded of her existence. "You," she snarls, and if Altena had thought that Mireille might have softened her reaction to an intruder, she is very clearly wrong. "I suppose you'll want something for your troubles. Gold? Jewels?"

"I'd really just like to…go," Altena says, pulling herself to a stand and running a nervous hand through her hair. The candelabra had called her __homely__ , for fuck's sake. Was she homely? She'd always thought she was decent-looking, at least.

The woman isn't focused on her appearance, though. Instead, new rage simmers in her eyes as she snarls out, "Well, that's too bad. Haven't you been paying attention? No one leaves this castle. Not without being torn to pieces by wolves."

"So I'm your prisoner." Altena peers at her with trepidation, unsure as to whether or not this is bad news or…worse news.

The woman's lip curls. "We're both prisoners here," she grits out. "Throw yourself to the wolves, I don't care. Just stay away from me and mine."

"Like I have a choice!" Altena says, outraged. "Listen, if I'm going to be trapped here with you, I'm not going to...lock myself in a room and hide out of your way!" She's had enough nightmares of grubby cells and tight spaces to last her an eternity, and she isn't about to let a nasty queen with some severe anger management issues force her into another one.

"Oh, I beg to differ," the woman snarls. "You'll find it in your best interests not to aggravate me." She lifts an anxious-looking Mireille up with a shimmer of magic that actually works and stalks past Altena to the door. "And stay out of the west wing of my castle!" she barks over her shoulder, storming from the room in another burst of energy and slammed-open doors.

The teapot says serenely, "Well, you can't win them all. Tea, anyone?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Welcome to a new story. I have finished reading a similar story for another pairing a few days ago and fallen in love with the idea and the writing style of the author.

I have adjusted the plot for our lovely characters and added a few more details. Hope you like it, 4 more chapters will be uploaded soon! ~A

* * *

In another part of the castle, Mireille is telling her mother everything about the stranger who had saved her from the wolves. "She came out of nowhere!" she says, eyes bright like they haven't been in a long time. "Just fought through the wolves and brought me home!"

Her mother smiles indulgently, masking her trepidation and letting her go on and on about a woman she'd rather not see ever again. A woman in her castle, who won't be able to leave. She swallows back her nausea and remains silent.

Mireile's mother is named Odette, though no one has called her that to her face in many years. Once, almost twenty-eight years ago to this very date, this castle had been a little hut in the woods and she had thought she could spend her life in it with joyful optimism. Now, she is queen of a castle that hasn't aged a day since and she wants nothing more than to escape it all with her daughter.

But there is no escape. And this stranger in her castle bodes only new disruptions that will never end well. When Mireille had finally returned to bed with a new bandage and another useless attempt to heal her– those wolves are resistant to magic, they wouldn't serve any purpose if they weren't– she steps out of their quarters and into the west wing of the castle.

She had been there earlier that night, stepped through the ravaged rooms and the torn paintings and made her way to the highest room of the tower. There is a rose floating in a bell jar on the table, all but a few petals on the table below it. Odette stares at them in quiet despair and closes her eyes, drifting off to sleep in the hard chair beside them.

Meanwhile, Altena is urged to a room by Marie and Aurelia. "It's best that you stay out of her way," Marie says apologetically. "She's not great at visitors. Or people in general."

"How dare you," Aurelia says, turning to glare at the clock. "She's __wonderful__ with the little tyke. She's just been waiting for the right person to come along." She offers a winning smile to Altena. Altena looks back at her, nonplussed. "Why don't you select something lovely to wear for breakfast tomorrow morning?"

The wardrobe, who goes by Tamra and has a friendly spinning wheel nearby, is quick to help her; and a dazed Altena is dressed and re-dressed several times before she pushes them all away. "Enough!" she says, a bit crossly. "I'm not __going to breakfast__. I'm not going anywhere near that woman again. You heard her. She doesn't want me around and I'm fine with that."

Aurelia and Bella exchange a look. "Well, that won't do," Bella says decisively, and brings out a sheer dress that begins somewhere halfway down Altena's chest.

As you might imagine, Altena doesn't sleep well that night, even in the luxury of the castle. She tosses and turns and thinks too often of a beautiful, terrifying woman she hardly knows with flashing eyes that soften around her daughter.

Across the castle, the same woman lies flat in bed, wide awake, her thoughts troubled with the memory of a woman who'd looked like a drowned rat as Odette had born down on her, but with eyes that had flashed with defiance through the fear. That defiance sticks in her heart and stays, like a pesky itch she can't reach, and she sighs to herself and thinks instead of the rose in the west wing of the castle.

In the morning, Odette has found no more contentment than in the night before. "No," she says immediately when Aurelia finds her. "Absolutely not."

"Don't you think you deserve better than this?" Aurelia wheedles. "Doesn't Mireille? The rose is almost bare and this woman appears in our midst and you can't tell me that she isn't a part of this. She could be the one."

"The one," Odette repeats dubiously. "That…that girl would be my __true love__? I've known her for half a day and I already hate her. She's obnoxious. Irritating."

"So are you!" Aurelia throws up her hands. A candle flies from her hands toward the bed, setting Odette's pillow on fire. "It's a perfect match!"

"Aurelia…"

Aurelia hops down to face Odette, her eyes beseeching. "At least give her a chance. Invite her down for breakfast. Maybe she'll surprise you."

Odette heaves a sigh. "Fine. But that's all. No schemes, no games. I'll order her to breakfast and then I'm __done__."

"Deal!" Aurelia agrees, waving her candle-less arm in the air as Odette heads for the door. "Wait, did you say __order__?"

But Odette is already out of the room, Aurelia shouting after her, "Be __nice__!" to no avail.

She knows where the woman would be staying, knows which room is the only one in the castle where anyone had ever stayed before. She raps on the door once and barks out, "You will join me for breakfast!"

The response is succinct and as obnoxious as expected. "Go to hell!"

"Say please," Marie hisses. Odette has no idea where she'd come from. A private meeting on how best to torment Odette, most likely, Aurelia presiding. "At least make an __attempt__ to woo her."

"Fine," Odette says through gritted teeth, reminding herself that this woman had saved Mireille and she owes her some tiny debt. "You will join me for breakfast… _ _please__."

The woman yanks open the door, and Odette nearly gapes. Sometime over the course of the night, she'd dried herself off and been put into one of Bella's gowns, and Odette blinks, startled at the change in appearance. Those fiery eyes are now accompanied by pale skin and long hair that falls past her shoulders in waves, settling on a dress that hugs her body well enough that Odette can't tear her eyes away.

"Go fuck yourself…please," she says sweetly, and Odette is still so transfixed by the dress that she doesn't think to respond until the door is slamming shut again.

She jerks back and snarls back, infuriated, "Fine! But don't expect to eat at all, then!" and storms for the dining hall.

Inside the room, Altena plops back onto her bed, blowing a lock of hair out of her face and sighing at the ceiling in defeat. It's been twelve hours in this castle and she's already alienated its queen. "She isn't the one holding you prisoner," her wardrobe says reprovingly.

"She might as well be." She doesn't deal well with being ordered around, especially not by a woman who'd threatened her life the night before. If she's going to be trapped in this castle for the rest of her life, she isn't going to do it while catering to the queen's every whim.

And so the day had continued as a hostile standoff, testing the stubbornness of these two women who we've seen possess inexhaustible amounts of stubbornness. By the end of the day, the inexhaustible were two, and the exhausted were…well, everyone else, not least of all you, my dear reader, and me.

But while we shake our heads from afar and clocks and teapots sigh from the mantle, one girl decides to take action instead. Odette has raised her with a good heart, you see, regardless of what kind of snit she might be in right now, and Mireille is determined to ensure her savior's happiness in her castle.

She pokes her head into Altena's room just after sunset, when she knows her mother will be in the west wing alone. "I'm pretty sure this was the one thing your mother was really, really clear on," Altena says dryly when she sees her. "You're not supposed to be around me."

"I'm bored!" Mireille protests, sitting down beside her on her bed. "You don't want me to run away again, do you?"

Altena raises her eyes at her. She pouts at her. "I just thought you might be hungry. Mama isn't around right now. You can sneak down to the kitchens with me." Her stomach growls. She beams, the same smugness that Altena had recognized in her mother's voice. "So that's a yes?"

And that's how Altena's stomach betrays her to a girl who won't take no for an answer. She talks tonight as she had the night before, keeping up a steady stream of chatter when she'd been silent until now. "Mama loved me since the day I was born," she says, poking out a finger to wipe dust off a railing. "My father didn't want me" she continues on, unaware of the thunderstruck look on Altena's face. "Mama promised me that I'd never be alone."

"Oh," Altena manages. She can't remember her own birth, of course. She doesn't know what had been said to the midwife or what her mother's final words had been, but she knows that this girl, locked in a castle with a mother who looks at her with the same eyes that the queen had the night before, is infinitely fortunate for it.

Her steps are a bit slower now, but Mireille doesn't seem to notice, and they're soon welcomed into the kitchen by an overeager set of dishes and glasses. Altena settles down, positively famished, and stares in wonder at the table as it fills itself up.

She doesn't know it, but she's being watched.

High in the west wing of the castle, Odette is sitting in solitude with the dying rose. There's a mirror hanging from the wall, one of the few items in the wing that haven't been wrecked or covered in dust. And in the mirror, Odette can see her kitchens with perfect clarity: her daughter, seated at the table as the dishes perform a little dance for their new guest; Aurelia, lighting the table and being carried from dish to dish as though she's the star of the show as Marie hops away, alarmed; and the woman named Altena, laughing helplessly at the entire scene before her.

Her eyes are bright and she looks younger, somehow, more alive. Odette is spellbound by her smile, caught in her glittering eyes and the way she exchanges a grin with Mireille before she turns back to the table. Like this, she seems less a bullish stranger, come to invade Odette's peace of mind, and more…whatever it is that Aurelia and Marie see in her.

But Odette, queen of a cursed castle, hasn't endured while frozen in time for twenty-eight years by chasing dreams of broken curses. No, Odette knows well enough that the rose and its promise had only been a cruel joke by the wizard who had cursed her.

True love and a broken curse are as impossible an ending for her as they've been since the night her husband had done the unforgiveable, even more so now. The only true love she can ever have again is Mireille's, and she is better for it.

No woman will change that, not now or forever. Not even one who can stop Odette's breath with only a smile.

* * *

You would think, in a castle the size of our heroines' residence, it would be easy enough for them to avoid each other. At least one of them has spent a good portion of her life in Laurent Bouquet's sprawling complex and managed days, even weeks, of not seeing the owner of the house, and that had been only an estate. This is a __castle__ , and Odette and Altena are unpleasantly surprised at how often they seem to wind up in each other's midst.

First, there's an incident in the dining room that ends with Odette stalking from the room in a huff and a number of forks sighing reprovingly. "I didn't mean it like that!" Altena had protested, and Aurelia had offered her a withering look that had been less than encouraging. And yes, Altena __had__ meant it like that, and Odette __had__ been justified in storming off that time.

I won't bore you with the details of the various incidents. Too many are snide remarks taken too harshly, Odette quick to anger and Altena quick to provoke. Too many are Altena-who-runs suddenly trapped and lashing out at the only person who seems to fight back. Too many are Odette with a dying rose on her mind and her heart clogged with fear and fury at her fate.

Altena walks past the west wing of the castle more than she absolutely has to, peering in surreptitiously and seeing nothing but closed doors. Altena is also rather atrocious at avoiding Odette in the first place, on par with only Odette herself. Aurelia scoffs at both of them. Marie is quietly wistful. Cece is certain already.

Mireille's thoughts on the matter are her own, and I won't disclose them to you just yet. I can only tell you that she makes no particular effort to keep the women apart, but she winds up leaving just as frustrated as they are, more often than not.

One day late in the first week, Altena bursts into a sitting room and demands, "What the hell?"

"What now?" Odette says tiredly, shutting her book with a sigh. "Come to critique my staff? My housekeeping? My face?"

"Don't be stupid, you're beautiful," Altena says irritably. Most everything about Odette irritates her, particularly the way her lips part for a moment like she's actually surprised by the comment and then set in a grim line. "What did you do to my coat?"

The coat she refers to in this case isn't an ordinary one, carelessly borrowed from Bella's closet. No, this is the one Altena had first purchased after she'd caught her first mark, a singular reward from Laurent Bouquet that had meant, to Altena, freedom and the promise of a future. She'd ridden through a pack of wolves with a rain-soaked red riding coat and saved a girl, and now the only thing she still owns is missing from her room.

"Ah, that." Odette busies herself with her book, revealing nothing– least of all, that she'd seen it in there while surreptitiously glancing into Altena's quarters. It had been filthy and worn but folded with care, set in a place of pride on her nightstand. Odette had felt an uncomfortable twinge in her heart and had sent the coat downstairs for cleaning. "I burned it."

"You–" Altena sucks in a breath. "You–" She breathes fast, her fists clenched, her eyes dark and furious. Odette, despite herself, has discovered a certain kind of glee that rushes through her veins when Altena's face screws up like this. She bites her lip to contain her smirk.

"It was unseemly," Odette says calmly. "I won't have peasantry in my home."

"It was the only thing I had from outside," Altena says in a low tone, and Odette's stomach twists at the emptiness in her voice. She nearly opens her mouth to admit the truth, but Altena's already on the warpath. "You took my freedom. You took my privacy. You treat me like I'm the enemy here instead of a __victim__ of whatever curse you brought upon yourself, and you had to take my coat, too?"

Odette stops listening somewhere around __whatever curse you brought upon yourself__ , the glee in her veins turning ice-cold to fury. "Do you think I want you here?" she spits out. "Do you think I asked for some __girl__ to invade my castle and make yourself at home in this prison?"

"So sorry I saved your daughter's life!" Altena snaps, throwing up her hands.

Odette grinds her teeth together, fingers digging into the cover of her book. "And you're going to claim that was __altruism__?" She doesn't pause to contemplate that idea, not when the retorts are flying fast and Altena's eyes are nearly pure purple in intensity right now. "I know what you were after. I know why a street rat–" And Altena flinches, but Odette doesn't notice. "–would save a girl who lived in a castle that looks like this. You got what you deserved," she bites out. "I have no pity to spare for you!"

"You think I did it for a reward?" Altena says disbelievingly. "Do you think the whole world is as cold as you?" Odette's glower is on at full blast. "I didn't save her for any of that! I saved her because she was in trouble and I __cared__! Not everyone is as horrible as you are!"

Odette scoffs. There is a tiny voice in her head, one that whispers warnings about a wilting rose and this woman who does seem to care quite a bit, but she pushes it aside. "You're lying," she says stubbornly.

"You're unbelievable." Altena whirls around, stalks for the door, and then whirls back. "And you know what? Next time, instead of blaming me for __saving Mireille__ , why don't you take a good, hard look at yourself and think about why it is that Mireille was so desperate to run away from you."

"Leave her out of this!" Odette snarls, rising to her feet. She takes four steps across the room, standing toe-to-toe with Altena in utter fury. "You keep Mireille away from your foul ideas of…" She's shaking, the tiny voice quieted and a thousand new fears and helpless doubts running through her head. In another story, with women far less stubborn, she might have wept right then.

But not this one, where these two have only ever learned how to fight. "And I knew!" Altena says fiercely. "I knew what would happen if I crossed into the castle. I've heard the stories." Odette stills, her heart pounding with new fear now. But Altena doesn't notice. "When I met you, I thought they were wrong about what lived in this castle. But I was an idiot." Her breaths escape in quick puffs, her chest heaving with fury, and Odette can feel the heat coming off her in waves. "They were right all along. You really are a beast."

Odette slaps her, catches her nail on Altena's lip and draws blood. Altena laughs, hard and wild, as Odette flees from the room, still trembling with suppressed fury and sorrow.

And Altena laughs and bleeds and heads upstairs just in time to see Marie struggling to set down a pile of freshly laundered clothes in front of bella. The red coat is folded on top of it, gleaming like it hasn't since Altena had first purchased it, and Altena curls up on her bed with it still in her arms as the laughter turns to frustrated tears.

And as Altena is regretting her outburst and wondering why the hell Odette has to make everything so __hard__ – as Marie climbs onto the bed and pats her shoulder with one awkward non-hand– Odette is already back in the west wing, her hand resting on the bell jar and her eyes fixed on the image of Altena in her mirror. She isn't weeping. She sits rigid, in absolute silence, and then she tears the bell jar from the rose it protects and hurls it at the mirror.

It bounces off, doesn't even crack the mirror, and when it falls to the ground, it shatters. Odette doesn't flinch, doesn't move, and a new bell jar appears over the rose before she turns back.

* * *

In summary, our early episodes are…less than ideal. I've seen my share of fairytales in the past, and none have been quite as fraught as this. It's a miracle that they made it past the first week of coexistence, let alone…

Oh dear, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's return to Altena instead, yes?

Altena is still learning more and more about the castle. Mireille shows her secret passageways and high towers in the north wing, and Altena asks probing inquiries about the west wing that have her shrugging. "I don't know. Mama doesn't like me going there, either."

Altena learns quickly to avoid the front gardens of the castle, where she'd first come in. It only takes several steps toward the gate before the growling begins, and she'd dared once to keep walking and had nearly lost a hand to a wolf's snapping jaw. She'd avoided going outdoors since, anywhere but the balconies and porches within the castle, and so she's startled one morning to look down from a balcony and find a neatly tended cherry blossom tree behind the castle.

It's still within the gate, at the base of the small hills that hide the castle, and so she pokes around until she finds a door behind the kitchen that leads to the outdoors.

Altena wanders around, half expecting to find a walking and talking garden hoe, but instead, she nearly trips over a woman, bent over the roots of the tree. She yelps out a curse, flailing and catching herself on the tree trunk, and Odette says dryly, "Incompetent as always. What was that, attempted murder?"

"You!" Altena straightens, her lips pressing together. She's been doing her best to avoid the queen since their last argument, building up their next encounter in her mind so much that it comes as a surprise to see Odette is only a woman, dressed in casual clothes with dirt on her knees. "What are you doing out here?" She begins accusingly and then falters, taken off guard.

Odette blinks at her, amused. "This is my orchard. I tend the trees." She stands up, wiping off her knees with a swift movement, and then plucks a flower from the lowest branches of the tree. "I'm rather good at it," she says, looking down at the flower in her palm.

Altena stares at her, amazed at how beautiful she looks

When Odette doesn't say anything, Altena looks up and sees Odette's lips parted, her eyes glazed where they're directed at Altena's face. She flushes and bites her lip as Odette's face finally jerks up guiltily. "I…" Odette takes a breath and then begins again. "I still remember the day when I found Mireille crying in the forest with these flowers falling down around her. I was shocked to see her again..." Her eyes are distant now, soft as they never have been before. "I thought I had lost her the moment I stepped into this forest, but then she was brought into the forest by my own husband."

"Oh," Altena says, nearly voiceless at Odette's glazed eyes. "You…"

It's as though Odette is transformed in an instant, her face suddenly wary and dangerous. "What?" she barks out, defensive again.

Altena's eyebrows shoot up and she makes an effort not to snap back. "I was just going to say that you're a really good mother to Mireille" she mutters. Odette's eyes round and she looks unguarded again for a moment. It galvanizes Altena. "It's your only redeeming quality, actually," she offers, less rancor in her voice than there could have been.

Odette stares at her for a moment, her lips pursed together. "Is that supposed to be an apology?"

It absolutely is, though Altena isn't prepared to admit it under Odette's judging eyes. "No!" she says, scowling. "I'm not going to apologize for you calling me…"

My apologies for interrupting the tale here, but I think it may be instructive to look back again to the grubby-faced girl locked in a prison for a moment, to her huddled in a corner as her captor walks in. He kicks over a loaf of bread with a snide __your meal, street rat,__ and she scrabbles at hard bread with her teeth, fading back into the shadows of her cell.

I can tell you that in the two years that Altena spent in a jail cell, she'd almost forgotten her own name. Sometimes she'd forget that she'd been a person at all, someone beyond a shadow creature alone in a cage. __Street rat__ had become a new identity, of sorts, and even in the days when she is hardest, it still probes deep.

She doesn't tell any of this to Odette, of course. Not now. Maybe someday.

Instead, there's a tense silence and then Odette speaks again. "It isn't quite as unseemly now that it's clean," she says, reaching out to tug at Altena's coat. It's an apology of sorts as well, and Altena's cheeks heat up accordingly.

Altena shrugs, feeling helpless and uncertain in their exchange. "It's just a coat. I just…it was the first thing I ever really __had__ , you know?" Odette doesn't respond, only waits, and Altena ventures on. "I find people who don't want to be found."

"I've noticed," Odette says dryly.

Altena scowls at her. "No, it's my __job__. I spent a few years locked up when I was pretty young. I was freed by a man who thought I had some talent, and this was…" She bites her lip. "He paid me handsomely after the first time I brought in a criminal. He said it was an investment in me. No one had ever invested in me before. So I purchased the coat and I…" She shrugs. Odette's eyes are unreadable. "It's important to me."

"I see," Odette murmurs. And there's a moment here in our tale– not a turning point, though that will come soon– but a moment of clarity, in which two women can stand opposite each other and dare to bend, unexpectedly. And Odette, a distant queen who quails at the thought of opening up to a crass stranger, suddenly wants to know more– __everything__ – about the woman fiddling with her coat opposite her. "Do you think your employer is searching for you now?"

Altena shakes her head. "I go on a lot of long trips to track my marks. I don't come back until I win." She grins for a moment, fierce and proud, and Odette can't tear her eyes from Altena's face. "And I always win."

A shadow crosses her face. "Though…this time, I suppose not," she says, raising her eyes to gaze at the mountains that rise above them. "Maybe in time, he'll realize I'm gone and replace me. He'll think I ran off." She sounds disturbed at the idea. "I never wanted…"

"Is there anyone else who'd be looking for you?" Odette asks, curious. Altena looks at her askance. "I worry about my privacy," Odette says swiftly.

"Of course you do," Altena says, and there's a note of disdain in her voice that has odette deflating, suddenly reminded that her change of heart doesn't mean that Altena's had one of her own.

Alas, she has no way of knowing that Altena is just as deflated, brought from a moment where they'd seemed to almost __have something__ back to a stark reminder that Odette is only inquiring for her own sake. "Don't worry," Altena says flatly, "I don't have anyone who would care about me. No family at all." The words shouldn't hurt quite this much after all these years, but somehow they still do.

Odette's lips curl into a smile, unbidden, and Altena gapes at her callousness. She'd known Odette could be angry, of course, and self-centered as hell, but she'd never truly thought her capable of such __cruelty__. But then Odette says wryly, "My husband was the one who put me in this castle. I can't help but envy you a bit," and Altena doesn't know how to respond to that at all.

She fiddles at her coat again, rubs her thumbs against the newly soft-again fabric and endures Odette's gaze on her in silence until she can't restrain herself anymore. "Why did you tell me that you burned it?" she asks tentatively, because Odette is baffling and Altena never knows what to expect from her.

"Ah." Odette quirks a smile, and a new tiny voice within her that sounds alarmingly like Aurelia says __tell her the truth. See what happens__. She doesn't need to be urged. There's something about Altena that draws out her truest self, each and every time, for better or for worse. "I suppose…I enjoyed seeing you riled up over it."

That had certainly not been the answer Altena had been expecting. Altena drops her hand, her eyes wide, and she gapes at a still-smiling Odette. " _ _What__?" Odette is still smirking, insufferable, as though she thinks that she's won this round. Altena blinks rapidly, infuriated and…much too flustered. "You…you're a piece of work."

"Thank you," Odette says serenely.

Altena glares hard at her and then stops abruptly, frustrated. "I can't even get angry now, can I? Because apparently you think it's– you think it's–" She flails, at a loss for words.

Odette, however, seems to still have at least one. "Cute?" she suggests, and the stiffness and hostility fade from her face for one unguarded moment.

" _ _Cute?__ " Altena stammers, horrified.

Odette's eyes only glint in amused response, and Altena's ire rises again and stutters to a halt behind her flabbergasted frustration. "You're full of it," she snaps, gritting her teeth and so off-balance that she can hardly focus at all. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing with me, but if you think you can manipulate me into…" She notices what can't __possibly__ be fondness on Odette's face, an eyebrow arched and her lips twitching and her eyes very warm. "Into…" Altena's cheeks are heated, her heart beating a hair too wildly and her fists burrowed in her coat. "That's it!" she bursts out, overwhelmed. "I'm done!"

She storms from the orchards, back into the shelter of the castle where she can lean against a counter in the kitchens, breathing hard as though she'd just fought a battle.

Back in the orchards, Odette leans against a tree, her own heart pounding with the same wildness that Altena's had been. And Altena doesn't know it, but Odette is just as helpless, as out of her depth and control as she had on the day she'd been entombed in this castle, and she can't– She won't–

She thinks of the rose, wilting away in a room high above her, and she sucks in a shaky breath before her lips settle into a grim line. To hell with the rose. To hell with __bending__ and exposing every vulnerability to a woman she can hardly be around without fighting. To hell with the way her heart flutters with renewed hope each time Altena had been taken off guard in front of her.

There are no happy endings. There is no hope. And she has to stay the hell away from Altena if she ever wants to acknowledge that.

* * *

There comes a time in any story when our heroes are in limbo; when any action requires making overtures they're not ready for or capable of. There's the nagging suspicion that something is going to have to change, that it's only a matter of time before everything they know is turned upside down, and there's a rush and a fear and finally, a movement forward.

Odette, however, is in no state to make a movement forward. Odette keeps to herself again, watches from the balcony of the west wing as Altena paces in circles around the orchard. Odette has quiet meals with Mireille that Altena is still too stubborn to attend, and Odette avoids ALtena wherever she can.

"Is she really that bad?" Mireille asks one evening. They're in a quiet sitting room far across the castle from Altena's usual pacing grounds, Odette flipping through a book and Mireille with her head on her shoulder as she watches the pages turn with sleepy eyes. "Altena, I mean. I like her a lot. I don't know why you two hate each other so much."

"It's a bit more complicated than that, my little princess," Odette murmurs, absentminded fingers stroking her arm. "Or maybe it isn't. Sometimes…there are just some people who can't get along."

"But what about the curse?" Mireille's eyes are open and guileless, just a child who sees things too clearly. Odette thinks for a moment about __I was just going to say that you're a really good mother to Mireille__ and she feels sick for a moment, nauseous at the thought of a rose and a lie that even Mireille believes. "If she's the one…"

" _ _Mireille__ ," Odette says pleadingly. It's been nearly ten years of this, the two of them together in a castle prison, and she can already see how a first glimpse of sunlight is making Mireille dream. "There is no __one__. Your father didn't put me in here to find happiness. If nothing else, Altena is here to prolong my agony." A shoulder turns stiff and bony against her arm, and she winces, close to tears. "I'm sorry. I wish there were a way–" She sucks in a breath.

There's a secret between mother and daughter, one nearly tangible in their quietest interactions: a night, three years earlier, with a girl who'd wept and screamed and shouted __you're not my mother, you did this to us, I want to be free__ as the weight of years of captivity had finally pulled her underwater. A night, three years earlier, when her mother had tucked her into bed anyway, kissed her cheek with an __I love you__ , and gone upstairs and thrown herself off the balcony.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that Odette had wanted to die that evening, to try the one thing left to break the curse that had hurt her own daughter so. Instead, she'd landed on the ground with her body bent impossibly, but her heart still beating. The rose had bloomed ever brighter when Marie had found her, gleaming mockingly from the window.

It had taken months before the bones had knitted back together around her cursed, immortal body, a pale-faced Mireille curled around her each night. "Too precocious for her own good," Odette had said dismally, because she'd understood even with the falsehoods she'd offered her.

And now, with Mireille's charge into the wolves and this new hope surrounding Altena, Odette fears and Mireille's shoulder slumps again. "It's okay," she says. "It's okay, she doesn't have to…" Her voice cracks. Odette kisses her forehead, and if there were a curse that could be broken here, it would shatter with that touch alone. "I just want us to be happy."

Odette has no answer for that.

Across the castle, Altena is crouched in front of a tree, glaring at the stars twinkling down at her as she searches for uncooperative answers as well. A teapot is perched beside her, in careful silence as though she suspects she might get a fistful of frustration if she says the wrong thing. "I just…the __nerve__!" Altena says furiously. "We finally get along for a couple of seconds and now she's blatantly avoiding me? What the hell?"

She's been lurking, waiting for some kind of…follow-up, maybe, some explanation or something that would clear up whatever had gone on between them. Instead, it's almost as though Odette is deliberately changing her schedule, going out of her way to avoid ALtena. And actually __succeeding__ , for a change.

Odette might be comfortable being in limbo, but Altena is certainly not, buzzing with impatience and a need to __move__ before she loses her mind. "She's a coward," Altena fumes, twisting around to glare up at the balcony where she knows the west wing is. "I can't believe I actually…I thought that we could…" She lets out an unintelligible grunt of frustration. "How the hell do you put up with her?"

Cece shrugs, the ceramic bumping upward where her shoulders should be. "It's…complicated," she says, and she sounds almost guilty. Altena peers at her, suddenly confused, and Cece smiles sadly and says nothing more.

A scene, if you will: a familiar one, a young woman shaking on the ground with fear and horror cleary on her face. A curse cast in cold fury. And just outside the scene, a second woman watches in horror, her father's best soldier standing beside her with her sword drawn.

Aging has always defied reason in the castle. Cece knows sometimes that she is older now– that she must be, as the scared young woman had grown into an angry woman into a wistful mother– but she's never seen herself in the mirror, not since she'd been barely an adolescent who'd nearly started a war.

But she is older now, perhaps the same age as the woman kneeling beside her with fire in her eyes and something lost and uncertain in her voice, and Cece sees her and thinks of a young woman who'd grown into a woman who still won't speak to Cece. And that creeping hope that had so suffused Mireille for a moment rises in her as well.

Altena, of course, shares none of their optimism, and Cece's silence on the matter is enough to work herself back into a fury. She's guided by distaste– everyone is so __tolerant__ , dammit, as though Odette is only __misunderstood__. People aren't misunderstood. People are assholes, and good people make excuses for them.

And as the evening passes– as Mireille returns to her room and Odette retires to the west wing, as Aurelis provokes Marie until the bulk of the castle staff is distracted by the squabble, as Cee watches Altena stalk away with thoughtful eyes– Altena is furious enough to consider pushing past breaking point, finally giving way and yanking them out of limbo.

When she makes it past the staff and upstairs, no one looks at her twice, not even when she makes a sharp turn away from her bedroom and toward the west wing.

And abruptly, she's in forbidden territory, fists clenched and raring for a fight. She pushes open a door and stalks in, ready to explode at Odette, and pauses momentarily in bewilderment.

The castle is opulent, a sort of grandeur to it that hearkens back to the days of true power and wealth. The west wing, however…

It looks almost like Altena's cottage, at first glance. The ceiling is lower, the paneling dark wood without any marble or gold. There's a cozy-looking couch on one side of the room, a cold stove on the other, and it's as though another building entirely had been transplanted into the castle.

There's a door at the back of the room, and Altena opens it and finds a bedroom, then another. The cottage is small but warm, homey in a way that the castle never quite masters, and Altena is startled when she opens a final door and finds the stone staircase of the castle tower instead of more of the cottage.

As she climbs up the spiral staircase, confusion fades back to ire. There are torn tapestries up here, a young woman posing with a man whose face has been burned beyond recognition. In another painting, it's the woman herself who has been burned out of it, the tattered tapestry hanging half off the walk. Altena's feet crunch on broken glass and she sets her jaw, preparing to confront Odette at last in a place where she can't run.

Odette is at the top of the stairs.

She's sitting in front of a table with a bell jar atop it, a rose glowing as it floats within the jar. As Altena stares, a petal falls from the rose and Odette lets out a strangled noise and turns away from it–

–Right toward ALtena. Altena freezes, a deer caught by a torch, and Odette says slowly, "What…the hell…are you doing here?" Her eyes are blazing, her hands quivering as she stands, and she seems like an alien person, like the woman who had found ALtena in her castle on that first night.

Altena gathers her courage. "I want to talk to you."

"I told you the west wing was off-limits," Odette snarls, her voice carrying down the staircase, rich and dark and deadly. "Get out."

You may recall that Altena has the unfortunate habit of pushing back when shoved. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me–"

She's abruptly stopped by a fire. No, a __ball of fire,__ flaming as it hurtles past her and the heat emanating from it lightly singes some hair. "Get out!" Odette roars, drawing another from her hands and hurling it at Altena. "Get out of my home, get out of my castle, get out!"

There's a violet energy sparking behind her, a halo of fire and magic like none Altena's ever seen as new fireballs hit the walls on either side of her. Altena's never experienced magic like this– never suspected it could be __real__ , never suspected it of the woman she hardly knows who rules this castle– and she's terrified, heart-pounding, knee-wobbling, shaking with terror. Odette looks just as terrified beneath the fury as she continues to throw fireballs that never hit ALtena, as though Odette is chasing her away with faux aggression. "Get out!" Odette howls, and Altena finally runs, eyes stinging with abject fear.

She doesn't run to her room. She doesn't even run to Cece, or to anyone else in this twisted, magic-ridden castle. She can only hurtle down out of the west wing, into the abandoned front hall, and stagger out the door without a second look back.

There are some things that our minds can't conceive of even once we're faced with them, and Altena's line in the sand is a tower on fire, a woman with murder in her eyes, and the kind of fear that could bring her to her knees. She isn't thinking when she climbs onto her horse and rides forward toward the gate in a panic; but if she had remembered the wolves, it's likely that they wouldn't have stopped her.

Not until she's already halfway toward the gate and they've materialized around her, and at that point she doesn't give a damn. "I got past you to get in," she grits out, kicking away a wolf. "You don't think I can't to get out?" The wolf's teeth sink into her heel instead, and she's thrown off balance and yanked from her horse instead. "Damn it!" she cries out, her eyes still stinging but now with frustrated tears.

The wolves are everywhere, pressing down on her so she can't stand or run, and the gate is nowhere near her. She punches one in the neck, kicks another, desperately tries to push them away and fails. Her head falls back against hard stone, her neck exposed, and she hears a growl and closes her eyes, tears trickling from them as she waits for them to finish her off.

Instead, there's a bright light and a weight is suddenly thrown from her. She cracks open an eye, disbelieving and astonished, and sees a woman standing over her.

Odette is still glowing with that violet light, and maybe that's why her blows are hitting the wolves; they fall back and charge again and again and again, clawing at her as she claws at them and tearing into her. Altena struggles to sit up and is dizzy, her head pounding and her body not moving properly, and all she sees is Odette like a beacon of light in front of her, keeping the wolves from ALtena with desperate, faltering blows.

She hurls fire at the wolves with a final surge of strength and they retreat at last, vanishing from their place at the gate, and Odette turns and blinks at the empty path with bleary eyes before she drops unceremoniously to the ground.

ALtena catches her before she hits the stone path, cradling her in her arms as she scuttles away from the wolves. She musters up enough energy to climb back onto her horse, Odette wrapped in her embrace as Altena's head droops, and she rides him back into the front hall and tumbles down to the fireplace, her face still wet and her heart thudding against her ribs.

She doesn't think to fear the woman in her arms again.


	3. Chapter 3

A curious thing happens that night in the castle, after Mireille is in bed and the staff is quiet in their places, watchful.

It begins with Odette's eyes flickering open with a groan as Altena presses a cloth soaked with boiling water to it. "Ungh," she says, and then "Ow!" a yelp so high that Altena nearly jumps.

"Hold still," she orders her, and Odette makes another surprised sound, less pained.

"Altena," she says, her face tight. "I thought you'd have run."

Altena presses the cloth to the wound again and Odette hisses, yanking her arm away. "You stayed to kill me!" she accuses her, and nearly drops her hand into the boiling water.

Altena slaps it away before Odette accrues even more injuries. "I wasn't the one throwing _fireballs_!"

"You shouldn't have gone into the west wing!" Odette says furiously.

"I wouldn't have if you'd just _talked_ to me!" Altena says, equally angry, and Odette's gaze falls to her lap, almost…

…penitent? Her fingers twist together and she doesn't move when Altena pours a bit more water from Cece's teapot and puts a compress on another scratch. She clenches her jaw and endures it in silence, back straight and eyes downcast, and Altena says quietly, "Thank you." Odette looks up again, startled. "For saving my life."

Blue, almost grey eyes with immeasurable depth hold hers, gleaming in disbelief, and Altena bites her lip and focuses on wrapping the wounds instead. There's something bubbling in her chest that she can't name, threatening to overwhelm her, and each time she looks up and catches Odette's gaze, it grows and grows within her. "I don't see why you can't just magic away your injuries," she says unsteadily.

Odette's lips quirk wryly. "The wolves wouldn't be very good guards for me if magic worked on them, would they?" She leans back against the chair, her arm still extended to Altena. "There are herbal remedies that might help. Mireille's wound was gone in days." She sucks in a breath. "I panicked," she murmurs. "When I saw you in the tower. I wasn't trying to hurt you, just to make you leave."

"Yeah, well, I didn't expect you to have all that _magic_ , Your Majesty," Altena shoots back, but she can breathe now, more relaxed around Odette now than she'd ever been before. Odette is leaning back against the chair, the smile still dancing at her lips as Altena's fingers graze over unblemished skin. Altena shivers despite herself.

"Not Your Majesty," Odette says, her eyes falling shut. "I was never a queen, despite my husband's best efforts."

"Never? But…" Altena gestures at the castle around them, perplexed.

Odette tilts her head back, the smile fading from her face. "When I was young, I always noticed something different about was only when I was nearly eighteen that I started to accept myself slowly.."

The teapot on the table splashes, boiling water nearly landing on Altena's leg. "Sorry," Cece says hastily. Odette doesn't look at her.

"Then I met my husband." The words tumble from her lips with quiet resignation, admissions that can end only in tragedy. "Everything was going fine until someone told him I had magic too. The situation escalated so quickly that I had to run from my own family."

"You ran here," Altena says, as the horrifying reality of the story begins to come together. The old stories about the castle had been with the certainty that the queen had deserved her prison sentence, that it had been some karmic punishment for her own actions. But this…

"I was foolish," Regina agrees grimly. "I thought he wouldn't mind my magic." She sucks in a breath and winces in pain.

Altena watches her in silence, crouching down to find the source of the pain. Her fingers skitter along Odette's side until Odette groans and jerks away, and Altena says, "If you want me to help you with that…"

Odette struggles when she stands, gasping out in pain again and falling back against Altena. But she slides out of her dress with ease, letting it drop to the ground and reveal smooth skin in the expanse beneath the corset, so soft that Altena inhales sharply when she touches the bruise marring it. "What happened next?" Altena asks, determined not to show her…not quite _discomfort_ …to Odette.

Odette braces herself against the side of her chair, her knees wobbling as Altena presses the cooled cloth against the bruise. "My husband was furious and determined to find and kill me. When he couldn't, he didn't even hesitate to send Mireille into a forest on her own."

"he wanted unlimited power and felt unsafe when someone else with magic abilities was near..." Regina glances at the teapot for a moment. Cece stares back in silence. "I don't know what came next. He must have tried to spread the rumors about me.."

Altena's fingers are unsteady around Odette, and she's doing her best not to stare. She watches her face instead, the firm jawline and soft chin and the way her jaw is stiff and clenched as Altena ventures, "The cottage in the west wing."

"My magic must have created in as a safe and normal place for me." Regina trembles, the dispassionate voice wavering. "My magic activated the curse on this castle. I can't die here. I can't live, either. I'm doomed."

"Tell her about the rose," Cece says from the table, and Odette jerks and glares at her with betrayed fury. Cece says evenly, " _Tell her_."

"You don't have to tell me anything." Altena is now determinedly looking away as Odette bends down to slide back into her dress. She glances back for a second– enough to see how well the corset displays Odette's already impressive assets– and her mouth goes dry and she forgets what she'd meant to say.

"There's nothing to tell," Odette says dully. "The rose is something that reminds me of my husband - offering hope only to snatch it away again. When the last petal falls, I'm trapped here forever."

"Aren't you already…" Altena gestures at the room around them. "What possible escape route could you have?"

"True love," Cece says, and Odette sinks back into the chair with a sigh. "True love is the most powerful magic of all."

I'm going to let you in a little secret, one Odette keeps closely guarded even from herself. It's a dream that haunts her, a _maybe_ she fights against as fiercely as she's ever fought her magic when she was younger.

Here is Odette's most secret vulnerability: deep down, she still believes just as much in true love as she had when she'd been a young girl.

"True love," Altena repeats, and she laughs without humor. Odette watches her, her heart thrumming and her side hot with a bruise she'd gotten for standing in front of Altena. "That's cruel," Altena pronounces, and something within Odette withers and dies. "To have you chasing dreams and lies for your freedom."

Odette smiles grimly, her heart held firmly in check. "Indeed," she says, and she looks away as Altena sneaks a final glance at her.

Here is Altena's most secret vulnerability: deep down, she wishes dearly that she could believe in a good end.

Events unfold in a drastically different manner from then on, as Odette and Altena settle into a different sort of routine than sniping and avoiding.

Altena begins it, perhaps, the morning after that harrowing night when she peers through Tamra's wardrobe for far longer than she ever has and dresses for a formal breakfast. She lingers at the bottom of the grand staircase, paces in front of the door to the dining room as casually as she can.

Aurelia hisses, "Stop being an ass and go inside," and Marie lets out a long-suffering sigh that's probably directed toward Aurelia, but Altena doesn't enter until Odette descends the staircase as well and starts, her eyes widening for a moment until she settles into something imperious instead.

"Miss Altena," she says formally. "I thought you'd sleep in today. You had quite the night."

Wary eyes follow Altena's movements as she knots her fingers together, stumbles over breaths of half-begun sentences and struggles to keep it casual. "I was just…wondering if that breakfast invite still stood?"

"I believe that was an order, actually," Odette says primly, and she moves past Altena into the dining room, her warm hand brushing against Altena's side. Altena's skin tingles as she gapes after Odette.

Odette turns. "Are you coming or not?" she demands, and Altena hurries after her.

Somehow, everything is a bit less claustrophobic when they don't despise each other. The castle is brighter and the larger rooms less oppressive, while the smaller rooms are downright cozy. Altena finds herself drifting more and more often to wherever Odette is at the time, her nerves calmed by that rich voice and her heart warmer and warmer with each tentative glance her way.

And Odette finds herself drifting more and more often to wherever Altena is at the time, taking solace in her company as she does Mireille's. There are small moments– impossible moments– where Altena's heart-stopping smile is directed toward Odette, and Odette is left breathless in an undertow of exhilaration every time.

After one such time, Odette forgets to look unmoved, and she's forgotten entirely that she'd been in the middle of reading a book with Mireille when she says, "Mama, the page?" and looks at her quizzically.

Flushing, Odette pulls away from Altena's warm gaze and returns to the book. "Yes," she says, flustered. "The page."

It's yet another fairytale, and they're fortunate that the library has enough books to feed Mireille's newest obsession. She refuses to read into her choice for tonight, an old storybook with the silhouette of two women stenciled onto the cover.

" _Johari was terribly frightened,_ " she reads, all too aware of Altena's eyes on them as she reads. " _She was all alone in the woods, and there was still a vicious demon on the loose. Her escape from the palace now seemed silly. Perhaps the queen she was meant to marry wouldn't be so bad, after all."_ Her throat feels raw, too raw to deal with this story, and her hands are limp on the book.

Mireille, whom she'd assiduously shielded from the more unsavory bits of her past, says, "Mama?" with a furrowed brow.

And then there's a set of hands over hers on the book, their fingers just barely touching. "Hey, why don't I give your mother a break?" Altena says, tugging the book from her limp fingers.

Odette seizes it back, horrified at her own weakness. "That's quite all right, Miss Altena," she says stiffly, returning to the proper page. Altena stays where she is, crouched in front of Odette with the tips of her fingers resting on the book as Odette reads on.

The princess finds a stranger in the woods, a young huntress she's fascinated by at once, and Odette's voice stops wobbling. She reads through the book, though Mireille's already guessed the ending, and Altena's leaning against the side of the couch as the huntress is revealed to be the young queen who'd been engaged to the princess in the first place.

Odette shuts the book with a definitive "The end," and then it's time to guide Mireille to her bedroom before she falls asleep on the couch. She returns to the library after and is surprised to see Altena still sitting against the side of the couch, fast asleep.

"Altena," she whispers, putting an awkward hand on her shoulder.

Altena blinks up at her and asks drowsily, "Was Althea Johari's queen?"

"Indeed she was," Odette confirms, biting back a too-fond smile.

"Oh. Good." Altena's head lolls back again and her eyes drift shut as she curls against the side of the couch. "Night, Odette."

 _Odette._ A long time ago, I told you that no one had used that name in years. Odette is accustomed to being _the queen_ or _Your Majesty_ or _Mama_ , and she's been comfortable with the distance the former two imply. It's an alien thing for her, to be called so casually by her name, and Odette jerks away from her in surprise and then something more.

Impulsively, a silly, daring– Odette leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to Altena's cheek. Altena mumbles in her sleep approvingly, curling up tighter with a smile light on her face, and Odette's cheeks heat up as she backs out of the room.

What had she expected? A broken curse? Altena to awaken and kiss her back? They've barely just learned to tolerate each other, and Odette is angry again– this time at herself, for giving form to foolish dreams for even a moment.

She storms back to the west wing to brood in silence.

"I've been thinking about what I want for my birthday," Mireille announces. She's perched between two branches of the cherry blossom tree, carefully picking flowers.

Odette says, " _Careful_ –" and recovers just as quickly, arching an eyebrow. There's a long history of this between them, Odette fretting and Mireille fearless as she scales the highest trees in the orchard. Altena doesn't know this, but she's already managed to memorize the way that Mireille's lips twist into a smirk identical to Odette's and the way that Odette's hand almost rises to her heart each time Mireille jumps to another branch. "Your birthday?" she says, lowering her hand with perfect composure. If Altena hadn't known to look, she might not have even noticed it.

Mireille, of course, knows how to look as well, and Odette is treated to a look of withering scorn. "I'm not going to fall, Mama," she informs her, swinging over to a branch directly above them. "I've _never_ fallen."

"There's a first time for everything," Odette says grimly.

Altena interjects, eager to cut off the bickering before Mireille starts throwing flowers. "So what do you want for your birthday, kid? How do we buy you presents if we can't leave the castle?"

"Easy." Mireille shakes a branch,making a few flowers fall down. "You throw me a ball."

"A _ball_?" Odette repeats, her brow creasing in disbelief.

"Yeah, a ball!" Mireille starts picking apples again. "We have someone new in the castle, _finally_ , and I've never had a proper royal experience. I want to have a party like a real princess!" she says it matter-of-factly, as though it's patently obvious.

Odette says, eyes narrowing, "Did Aurelia put you up to this?"

"No!" Mireille insists. Conniving as she can be for a ten-year-old, she's telling the truth today. In fact, it hadn't been Aurelia who'd suggested it.

It had been Cece. "It's the only thing I want for my birthday," Mireille says, pouting as she shakes another branch.

Flowers rain down on their heads and Altena ducks, batting them away before they can hit her. One glances off Odette's side instead, hitting the spot where she'd been bruised after the wolves, and Odette lets out a cry of pain and loses her balance.

Altena moves instinctively, catching Odette around the waist as she falls backward, and at once, there's a woman pressed to her. Odette is still wobbling from the blow, her hands reaching to grasp Altena's wrists for balance. Her head lolls back, resting against Altena's shoulder for a long moment, and Altena's breath catches in her throat.

Odette's hands are warm on her wrists and her body is warmer, her breathing soft as it tickles Altena's neck. Altenais warm, too, and there's an impossible gap between them, suddenly, an unspeakable but desperate need that crosses over both of them at once. They're both acutely aware of the closeness of their bodies, of the distance from Odette's lips to Altena's neck, of how easy it would be for either of them to shift and suddenly they'd be–

Altena swallows, overcome with a buzzing sort of anticipation, and she shivers and raises her chin, just slightly, her mind blissfully empty of everything but need. Odette lets out a throaty hum that vibrates against Altena's shoulder, and she–

There's an "Oops!" from above and a final flower drops onto Altena's nose before falling to the ground. Odette startles in place, pulling out of Altena's arms as neatly as she'd fallen into them, and she scolds Mireille, "You're going to give one of us a concussion at this rate."

"Sorry!" But Mireille's eyeing them curiously, her lower lip caught in her teeth as she studies them, and she says, "So, the ball?"

Odette looks at Altena, her cheeks a warm tone of red-brown. Altena says, "It sounds like fun?" a bit uncertainly. She'd never been to a ball before, not without a mark in her sights and a dress that could be easily swapped for subtler clothes. But her heart is beating unsteadily in her chest and she doesn't dare put a label on it, other than a certainty that it's about this ball.

"A ball it is," Odette decides, her eyes flickering to Altena as Mireille whoops and nearly falls out of the tree. " _Mireille!_ "

Altena's enthusiasm waxes and wanes throughout the day, and she's restless as Odette and Mireille sort through the flowers, making plans about what they're going to do with them. There's an emptiness at the pit of her stomach that isn't filled with flowers. Some might say it's about the future looming before her, the domesticity of the day she'd spent with mother and daughter and how it makes life in the castle seem so very _livable_.

Others– those who know Altena best, perhaps– might see instead her past and future spread before her and remember how much she loathes being caged. And each future that stretches ahead of her is within a cage, suddenly eminently possible and eminently stifling.

Altena walks through the dusty front hall instead, sneaking glances out the doors to where the gates lie wide open, taunting her. She hesitates when she's directly in front of them, claustrophobic in this massive empty hall of a castle, and she clasps her hands together to filter out some of the nervous energy that wiggles through her.

A hand lands on her arm, gentle and a bit cautious, and Altena turns guiltily. Odette withdraws her hand, apologetic, and Altena is even guiltier at the idea that she'd hurt Odette's feelings. She seizes her hand instead, their hands dangling between them as Odette clears her throat. "I have something I'd like to show you," she says, shifting from foot to foot.

She leads Altena up a rear staircase, past whispering dishes and a corner where Marie and Aurelia are huddled together, watching their ascent. Their hands are still together, keeping Altena centered as she blinks in the darkness of a winding staircase that goes higher and higher still.

"We're not…going to a dungeon or something, are we?" Altena says, laughing nervously.

She can almost hear Odette roll her eyes. "No, Altena." She's come to love the way Odette's voice curls around the syllables of her name, the crack of hesitation in the _Al_ before the _thena_ , the way it makes warmth bloom in Altena's chest like the first rays of sun after a thunderstorm. "I'm not taking you to my dungeon." There's a note of seductive danger in her voice, making it clear that Odette does in fact _have_ a dungeon to lock Altena in. Altena gulps.

Odette laughs. "We're almost there," she promises, tugging at Altena's hand, and they round another circle and are abruptly on a dark landing. Odette says, "Close your eyes," and Altena obliges, stumbling after her with eyes shut.

A cool breeze whispers against her face and she breathes in, feeling nothing but the outside air and the electric touch of Odette's thumb grazing her wrist as she guides her forward. Altena wonders for a moment where they are, somewhere high and outdoors, and if Odette might just…push her out of a tower…but she silences the voice in her head quickly. No, Odette isn't going to hurt her. She…she trusts her.

She breathes in calming night air at _that_ revelation and Odette says, "You can open your eyes now."

Altena opens her eyes and gasps. They're on one of the rear turrets of the castle, a higher one that sits above the orchard. It's just high enough and positioned just between the two hills that rise behind the castle, and Altena can see directly from the turret to the city, sprawling out over the opposite side of the hills. The night sky is dark and vibrant black-blue over it, the stars gleaming brighter than any she'd ever seen before. It's a stunning, impressive view that, for a moment, makes Altena forget that she's a prisoner here.

"I go here sometimes when I want to…" Odette huffs out a little laugh. "Pretend, for a little while."

"It's beautiful," Altena murmurs, watching a tiny horse and carriage, small enough from this distance to be a toy, cross a bridge she's ridden across hundreds of times in the past.

"I know you don't want to be here," Odette says, her fingers light against Altena's palm. "And I can't do anything about that, but…I thought this could be a private place for you when you need to feel free." She exhales, long like a whisper, and says, "This is my gift to you."

"A gift–" Altena tears herself away from the view to stare at Odette, eyes gleaming in the moonlight. "This is your place."

"It's yours now." Odette is lit up by the stars, her skin gleaming with an almost otherworldly glow; and when she smiles, it's breathtaking. Altena stares at her, wordless, a lump in her throat. "I never did say thank you for saving Mireille's life."

"You don't have to thank me for that." Altena leans in closer, drawn in toward Odette's gaze like a moth to a flame. For all the beauty of the view beside her, she finds that she's far more awestruck at the smile that sits so easily on Odette's face, as though it truly belongs. "You saved my life, too."

"I know this is…" Odette gestures around them, back to the castle. "I know that this is the last place you want to be." She's still smiling, though it's tinged with regret. "But I can't say that I'm sorry that you came here."

"Because of Mireille," Altena whispers, her eyes seeking the world in Odette's face and finding something they can't comprehend instead.

"Mireille," Odette echoes, and Altena wants to reach for her and is afraid of what might happen if she does. "Of course, Mireille," Odette repeats. "And…" Her voice trails off.

Altena shakes her head, her fingers sliding between Odette's. "This isn't the last place I want to be," she admits, in this empty castle that's become a home warmer than any she'd ever lived in before. "It's…if I weren't locked in, I think I'd… Because of Mireille. And…"

"And," Odette says softly. Altena's lips curl upward, though her eyes are still lost in another emotion altogether.

"Stay with me," she requests in a murmur, and Odette's eyes grow impossibly brighter. They turn together to watch the river flow through the hills in silence, Altena's finger crooked around Odette's.


	4. Chapter 4

Anna is delighted to have something new to design for her. "I was never allowed to spin, back when I was human. There was a curse I…never managed to set off," she says, laughing that fullbodied laugh of a wardrobe. "I was trapped in this one instead."

"Everyone's got a curse these days," Altena says half-jokingly. "How did you get here?"

Anna sighs, even as the wardrobe hums busily with magic. "I was very young. Very besotted with Marie. I used to follow her and Cece everywhere, and I had no idea what I was in for when Cece took off in a rush to a strange cottage in the woods. We were caught in the curse and I was suddenly…" The face of the wardrobe contorts into a grimace. "My father must have been ready to start a war, but the queen's husband left no evidence behind. I have no idea what became of my kingdom."

"You're a princess," Altena understands, startled. "But not the princess who– Cece." Anna bobs her head. "Cece was the princess who told the secret?" It all makes a bit more sense with that context, and she's still mulling it over when the wardrobe pops open and there's a new dress hanging within it.

It's a deep red, a larger skirt than she's accustomed to and a bodice that dips lower than anything Anna's made for her thus far. She touches expensive satin almost reverently, somehow moved by this dress made just for her, just for the following night. "Mireille's going to be so excited," she says, for lack of a better explanation of the anticipation that shivers through her.

Anna snorts. "Sure, this dress is for Mireille." She slams the doors of her wardrobe closed when Altena steps back to stare at her. "No more touching. I don't want you getting it dirty before tomorrow night."

There's a level of excitement that permeates the whole castle before the coming ball, excitement that manages to infect even Altena and Odette, who have fewer designs on the night than anyone

else. There's something shifting between them, subtle but not unwelcome; it means secret smiles to each other and themselves, means hands brushing in the hallway and little electric jolts with the contact, means eyes that search and find something in the other.

It's…something, something Altena won't name because she's never had anything quite like it. It makes her warm, makes her breathe, makes every visit to the turret a reminder that has her heart glowing in her chest.

It's something Odette won't name because it hurts, because every moment of warmth is a reminder of something she isn't destined to have. Every glance and smile and Altena's skin against hers is a quiet knife digging into her skin, and she willingly pulls it in deeper if it means just a few more moments of seeing Altena's face so bright.

She magics up a dress for the ball that has Aurelia cock a waxy eyebrow and say, "I do like the slit, but if you're going to seduce the girl, consider a bit less of a collar."

"I'm not trying to seduce her," Odette says wearily. "I don't want her to…I'm not roping her into this twisted situation."

"Well, it's too late for that, isn't it?" Aurelia shoots back. "She's trapped here until the day she dies. The least you can do is try to have her break the curse."

"She can't," Odette says, bone-tired of dreams that never come to fruition. "You know my husband as well as anyone. He doesn't dole out escape routes. And Altena deserves more than this castle or…"

Her voice trails off, and it's Marie who says, "You?" They both stare at her. She gives a helpless little hop in place, leaning back against Odette's closed door, and shakes her head. "You hardly have control over that."

"I don't have control over anything," Odette retorts, sharp enough that Aurelia attempts to step between them and Marie rolls her eyes, unimpressed. "This least of all. Altena making the best of a bad situation doesn't mean that you two get to turn this into some sort of fairytale."

"We–"

"And don't you dare talk to her about this," Odette snaps, frustrated with them both. Aurelia glares back at her. "Don't you dare make her uncomfortable or put her in a position where she feels like she has to… To…"

She can't even say love me, and Marie gives her a grave look before she departs, Aurelia stomping behind her. Odette kneads her temples and remembers wistfully when she'd been intimidating enough that only Mireille would dare speak her mind around her.

What has Altena done to her?

And, my dear readers, though I'm sure you're already several steps ahead of Odette, you'll want to watch her here, as the next day passes in a whirlwind of birthday preparation and Mireille's ball begins at last. Sit back, take a breath, and imagine the wonder when they first appear at the top of the staircase to the ballroom.

Altena is the first to enter the ballroom, and she does so with awe. The dusty entrance hall has been scrubbed clean, the floors shiny and new and the massive chandelier cleared of spiderwebs. There's a birthday cake at a place of honor on a back table, surrounded by finery and more food than the three of them could eat in a year. She'd be horrified at the waste if it she hadn't known it was magic; instead, it all intimidates her, more opulent than any event she's ever attended.

"You've outdone yourself," she says to Marie and Aurelia, who've offered themselves up as centerpieces near the spreads and are very obviously watching with the same anticipation. "Mireille's going to love–"

The orchestra strikes a beat, a music stand waving its hands as the music rises, and Altena twists around to watch the star of the show descending the staircase, her mother's hand wrapped around hers. She's wearing a smart little dress and beaming down at her, and she grins right back at her and cranes her neck to get a better view of Odette.

Odette is in black, her dress flowing behind her and slit half up one thigh. The rest of the dress is almost conservative, sheer black fabric spanning the expanse between Odette's neck and her cleavage and stretching along her arms, but it manages to display Odette with regal poise like the queen she'd never truly been. Altena's mouth is very dry as she watches as Odette steps down a stair and a long leg dips into sight and then out again.

Odette looks around at the tables first; almost smiles at the chandelier, and only then sees Altena at the bottom of the stairs. "Altena," she breathes, her eyes sliding down Altena's dress with heated interest.

"Happy birthday, Mireille," Altena says in response, and Mireille looks between them with acute suspicion before Odette takes her hand and tugs her into a dance.

Mother and daughter do some artful dancing, both apparently well-versed in it, and Altena lifts an eyebrow, impressed. She has no way of knowing, of course, not about a tiny baby gurgling in Odette's arms as Odette had practiced, for the first time in decades, the dances that her mother had taught her. My little princess and movements that make tiny Mireille giggle or sleep, my little princess and Mireille is almost five but still loves dancing with her mother. They dance less as the years go on, but the moves still come naturally to them both.

They come less naturally to Altena, who stumbles onto Mireille's toes a dozen times before she gives her a dirty look and shows her how to lead. She's a quick study, and they're spinning around the room soon enough, Odette leaning against the table beside Aurelia and watching them with bemusement.

Aurelia lets out a little huff of frustration and hops onto the next table, extending a gallant hand to Marie. Marie eyes her suspiciously but takes her hand, and Odette laughs aloud as she watches them twirl across the ballroom floor. I can tell you that all the pressure and anxiety that had suffused the night had slipped away from her as she'd watched her daughter dance with their guest, and she's beginning to feel light and unbothered in a way that has so rarely touched her before.

Mireille goes in for another dance with her mother, tugging Altena with her, and they dance together for a few bumpy minutes of whirling laughter before Mireille announces, "I'm going to get some cake," and leaves them standing opposite each other on the dance floor.

Altena licks dry lips and extends a hand. If, perhaps, Odette has been calmed by the night and the dancing, Altena remains tense and waiting for something she can't name. And they both know it's here now. "May I… May I have this dance?" Aurelia hurls a candle that whizzes over and nearly hits the conductor stand across the hall. The orchestra tempo immediately slows, the music drifting through the hall so gentle that it's nearly melancholy. Odette takes Altena's hand and spins from her, then returns, landing in her arms with dark, dark eyes.

Altena gapes, struck by them. "Hi," she whispers, smiling awkwardly, and Odette's lips curve into a much more graceful smile. She doesn't answer her, just takes her other hand and leads Altena in a smooth dance that Altena somehow manages to follow.

They're apart again in a moment, Altena's hand high as Odette spins beneath it, and then she's back in Altena's arms and doesn't move from them again. They're swaying together, the steps of the dance becoming routine enough that Altena can forget them and focus on Odette instead.

They're barely inches apart, cool breath close enough to feel and gazes locked as they sway, and Odette, at that moment, cares little about curses or roses or her friends' urges and only about the figure opposite her, radiant in red, and how the smile has fallen from her face to be replaced with something almost fearful. Altena, at that moment, cares little about anything else in the world aside from Odette's hands on her back and shoulder, her eyes betraying a deep tension that has Altena leaning in, craving to know more.

Cece is humming something from her spot near Mireille. Mireille is watching Altena and Odette in silence, her eyes bright. Altena and Odette notice none of it, not when Aurelia dims the lights in the room or all of them fade back against the walls. There's a single moment near the door when Altena whispers something in Odette's ear and Odette turns to find Mireille, but Mireille waves them on swiftly and returns to a serious conversation with the orchestra.

Odette, mollified at Mireille's approval, tucks her head against Altena's as Altena steers them out an inner door and around a corner, stepping out onto a balcony that overlooks the orchard. One arm is still wrapped around Odette's shoulders, Odette comfortable resting against Altena, and Altena strokes the silk of her dress from her shoulder to her waist.

Odette shudders against her and Altena slides her fingers just a bit lower, over her hip to where the material of the dress splits and opens, and Odette shifts in place so she's standing opposite Altena again, her forehead pressed to Altena's neck as Altena's fingers twitch against the barest hint of skin.

"I had a really good time tonight," Altena murmurs into Odette's hair. "Your castle knows how to throw a ball."

"A ball for three." Odette snickers against Altena's neck, raising her face at last to meet Altena's gaze. "They're glad to do it. Especially for you and Mireille."

Altena scoffs, dropping her hand and letting it settle again on Odette's waist. "I've met them. I know how much they adore you." Odette quirks an eyebrow in polite disbelief and Altena says, "No, really. I'm…" She winces, embarrassed. "I'm glad you have that kind of support, you know? I've never really had anyone, aside from…"

A shadow falls over her at once, a guilt she's been shrugging off for weeks now that has never been as much as she must think it should be. Because Altena who's never been good but always been true has vanished without a trace mid-mission, and probably lost Laurent's faith forever. And to her always-charitable thoughts, Laurent had been the only one who'd ever had faith in her–

–Ever, except maybe the family she's found here. Altena stares at Odette, helplessly caught in her

worried gaze, and Odette says, "Your employer," with so much understanding in her voice that Altena doesn't know how she'd ever hated her. Maybe she hadn't, after all. She can't imagine how she could possibly hate someone with Odette's eyes.

"You've been so kind," Altena whispers. "I've really been…I'm happy with you. Please don't think I'm unhappy."

And there's a shift in the atmosphere of the room, a new degree of intensity where it seems at last that these two orbiting hearts might finally collide. Their eyes are dark and lidded, both of them tilting toward each other, and Altena licks her lips and looks down at Odette's with breathless hunger. Odette puts a hand on Altena's cheek, thumb moving along her jawbone, and Altena's heart flies wildly against her ribs.

Odette ruins the moment, to our despair. Odette thinks first only of Altena and second only of what she needs from her, and Odette whispers, her breath tickling the moisture on Altena's lips, "I can show him to you, if that's what you need."

"What?" Altena blinks up at Odette, their prior conversation promptly forgotten with Odette so close.

Odette winces, her fingers falling from Altena's skin. "I have a…I suppose it's a magic mirror, banal as that sounds. It can show you anything you want to see. If you'd like to see how your employer is now…if it'll give you some peace of mind…" Her smile is tentative, and something warm and unnamed swells in Altena's chest. "I can help you."

And it's all about to go to hell, of course, though I'm sure you've already guessed that. So let's take a moment to enjoy what we can– Altena's hand, tucked into Odette's elbow as they leave the porch. Altena's head is ducked down and Odette is smiling at her with bright eyes, and both of them have little smiles on their faces. Enjoy the breathless anticipation of two women who know where this is going to end– where tonight is going to lead them, and how happy they both are about it.

Enjoy them stumbling up staircases because they won't let go of each other and Odette's arm dropping so she can seize Altena's hand as they enter the west wing. Enjoy the fierce little flicker of hope that alights on Altena's heart and then Odette's, as she climbs the staircase and sees a withering rose in her bell jar.

You can, if you dare, even enjoy Odette's gentle touch on Altena's elbow as she says, "Mirror!" and a face appears in her mirror on the wall.

"Your Majesty," the face says, and waits.

Odette looks at Altena. Altena steps forward, eager at last to see this single taste of home, and says, "Please…show me Laurent, my employer."

She sees only the mirror, the raised eyebrow and then the flickering picture that begins to form. She doesn't see Odette's face stiffen like a waxen figure, immobile and with only her eyes expressing any sort of horror. She doesn't see the way everything stops for Odette and the medley of emotions that cross over her face– suspicion, horror, fear, grief, all at once.

And then she sees Laurent, coughing up blood as the doctor examines him. "No," Altena whispers, horrified. Laurent is laying in a bed, his steely face pale and weak with sickness, and Altena doesn't hear the strangled noise from behind her.

And then Laurent croaks out, "Altena," as though she knows that Altena's watching. Odette's lips are pressed into a thin line. Altena watches, eyes wide and heart heavy with guilt. "You told me once…" Laurent coughs again, nearly chokes. "Altena is the only one who can save me."

Doctor is a witch doctor of sorts, stranger and more disconcerting than any man Altena's ever met. Now, he nods. "I still see Miss Altena in your future, though I can't say how." Altena's brow furrows. "Perhaps she will be the one to save you, if she ever returns."

Laurent says, "And if she–" and the mirror glows blank, returning to its reflective surface. And behind her reflection, Altena can see Odette's hand extended at the mirror, her eyes thunderous.

"Odette, what–?" Altena starts, but Odette is suddenly laughing, loud and desperate and her eyes watery with tears.

"Of course," she says tilting her head back and laughing even harder. "Of course he's your employer. The world has only ever been so cruel to me."

Altena stares at her, nonplussed. Odette snarls out, "Damn it!" and hurls a bolt of lightning at the mirror, smashing it into shards.

Altena jumps back, spinning around to grab Odette's arm. "Odette! What the hell?"

"Your employer–" Odette hurls another surge of magic, her teeth grinding together. "That man you owe your freedom to–" She's shaking, her face twisted into something Altena's never seen on her before and dislikes at once. "He's Mireille's father. He was my husband."

"What? No, that's impossible." But Odette isn't joking. Odette is furious, her arm still trembling in Altena's grip, and Altena is frozen with indecision. "Laurent's kind of a tough cookie, but he wouldn't have done that. There must be some…some…"

"Don't be an idiot, Altena," Odette says coolly, and Altena's head jerks up in outrage but she only sees weary regret on Odette's face. "I know him better than you ever will. He's never done a single thing that wasn't self-serving."

"He saved me!"

"He needed you. He needs you right now, don't you understand?" Odette's arm quivers uncontrollably, her eyes wet and vulnerable. "He's dangerous and he will do anything ,he can to destroy everything I–" She shuts her eyes, tears still leaking through them.

Altena says, "He's dying. I can't just– He's dying and he thinks I've abandoned him." Her heart is thumping in her ears and her head is hot, aching, and she can't quite process that the villain of Odette's story could be the hero of hers.

And these are two very stubborn women, women burdened with desire to do the right thing that becomes ever more potent when they can't agree on what that thing is. Odette, violated at this connection and horrified for Altena and for what Laurent might do next, knowing her husband with the intimacy of a victim. Altena, made obstinate with the debt she owes to Laurent and sick at the thought of abandoning someone in need.

So they fight, as they do. Altena is helplessly determined. "I can't leave him alone. I can't– he's changed, Odette, and if I can talk to him–" The thought comes like a breath of air after drowning, fresh and right. "If I talk to him somehow– he can help to lift the curse! We can leave here, be free and–"

And something curious happens within Odette, queen of a castle prison she'll never leave. The rose on the table drops another petal– second-to-last, but it seems redder somehow– but this curious thing isn't about the rose on the table, nor is it something that Odette cares to define. It's a sort of surrender that is both joyous and defeated, that is the very hardest and very simplest thing she's ever done in her life. It's a moment of pure clarity that tears through her like a knife and

rends her into two halves before she carefully sews them together again.

She clears her throat and her eyes are still wet when she smiles, cutting Altena off before she can make promises she won't keep. Altena is noble words and so focused, always, on what others need. Altena is…Altena is someone she was never going to be able to keep, and she should have known better than to think otherwise. "You can do better than that," she says, her breathing unsteady. "I think I might have figured out a way to you out of here."

"You–" The betrayal that Odette's expecting never crosses Altena's face. Instead, there's wonder and concern. "You'd do that?" And Altena sounds vulnerable– as though she's shocked less at Odette helping her get to Laurent than she is at Odette helping her, at anyone helping her– and Odette knows that there's never been a choice at all.

"Of course," she says, but when Altena reaches for her hand again to hold it, she twists away before Altena can touch her.

Altena is going home at last, somehow– Odette's better than anyone at making the impossible seem effortless, and Altena doesn't ask questions but she believes her implicitly– and instead of joy, she can feel a dozen different concerns thrumming through her at once. Laurent. The wolves. Odette and Mireille.

Odette and Mireille.

Odette leads her down the stairs again, back through the cottage-that-was, and there's a new distance between them that makes Altena want to sob instead of exulting. Fuck. Laurent is Odette's husband and Odette is going to send Altena back to him regardless. She can't blame Odette for this new stiffness in her posture– leading instead of walking side-by-side, Odette's shoulders high and her eyes fixed ahead of them as Altena pads behind her.

She's going to fix this, though Odette won't understand yet. She's going to go to Laurent and figure out whatever it is that she's supposed to do to save him and then she's going to bargain for Odette's freedom. "I'm coming back," she says aloud, her every syllable marked with determination. "Please believe that."

"Don't," Odette says, and Altena is silent again. "You…" She gestures toward Altena's room, near the end of the next hall. "You should go change into the clothes you came in. I don't know how well the magic will last outside of this castle."

Altena tries again, tumbling in the undertow of Odette's coolness. "Odette…"

Odette turns, finally, her shoulders dropping and her eyes still unreadable. "Altena," she says, and there's finally, finally a wealth of emotion in her gaze with that single word. "I want you to be happy."

Altena watches her, aching with all her heart. A window shutters again over Odette's face, the inhuman stiffness that sits so wrongly on Odette, who feels so much, returned. "Thank you," Altena whispers.

"Please be careful with my husband," Odette says, a note of pleading leaking through in her voice, and then she's turning on her heel and retreating to her quarters.

Altena swallows and watches her go as she pushes her own door open, which is why she's so distracted that she doesn't notice Mireille on her bed until she's kicking off her shoes. "Mireille," she says, alarmed. "I was about to change–"

"You're leaving?" she demands, her little face colorless and her eyes blazing.

Altena sags at her disappointment. "Just for a little while. I promise, I'm coming back."

"Not good enough!" Mireille snaps, her hands clenched into fists. "The last petal is about to fall. If you leave now, we'll never be able to break the curse!"

"Break the curse– Mireille, what do you mean?" She can feel blood rushing to her head, can feel herself on the verge of exhausted tears from what this evening had been. Has it only been an hour since she was dancing with Odette and Mireille?

Mireille is still dapper in her dress, her eyes red-rimmed beneath their fury, and she bursts out, "You were supposed to fall in love!" Altena stares at her in consternation. The room around them feels thick, suddenly, like straining through an overpowering heaviness just to remain standing. "You were going to have true love's kiss and break the curse!"

"Mireille." She keeps saying her name, desperate for the grounding it lends her. "Your mother is right about that. The curse is rigged. There's no such thing as true love."

"There is!" she says stubbornly, blinking away tears. "There is, and I saw it. I know you're in love. You have to be." There's a traitorous blur of wetness in Altena's eyes, and she remembers suddenly what it had been like when her heart had been a heavy stone within her ribs, reminding her that she is no one at all. It's been so long that she'd hardly thought of it at all. "I've seen you together. You have to be–"

"I'm sorry," Altena says tearfully, and Mireille is still talking urgently, still dredging up every catalogued exchange and touch and gaze as though she might be able to persuade her, and she can't bear to listen to any of it. She can't think about what Odette means to her because– because–

She falls to her knees in front of the bed, pulls Mireille into her embrace and lets her angry sobs fall against her skin, lets her cry furiously as she blinks away her own tears and kisses the top of her head, over and over again.

When she shifts at last, it's from a strained voice in the doorway. "Mireille, why don't you let Miss Altena get changed." Odette is dressed simply now, wearing the sort of clothes she reserves for tending the orchard, but her hair is still piled atop her head. Altena's eyes stray to her neck and she wants, so desperately–

No. Not anymore. Maybe when she returns.

And when you have freedom, when you can run anywhere you want, why would you ever run back here? It's a stray thought but it isn't her own. It bubbles up in a distinctively Odette voice, caustic but resigned, and Altena bites her lip so hard it bleeds.

She changes slowly, reluctant under Anna's somber gaze, and she joins Odette at the door to the castle. Mireille is on a chair in the ballroom, glaring at her with betrayal. She can't bear to watch. "What are you going to do?" she asks, turning to Odette. "How are you going to stop the wolves?"

"I won't," Odette says grimly, and she charges forward, straight to the gate.

The wolves come. The wolves tear into Odette before she's halfway there, and Altena cries out in horror and bolts after her, climbing onto her horse and kicking wolves aside. "Odette!"

"Altena, go!" Odette snarls as she throws a wolf back with magic that sputters and dies. "I can't hold them off forever!"

"I'm not leaving you to get mauled!"

"Go!" Odette shouts again. "They want me, not you. It's the only way they'll let you–" She's cut off as a wolf leaps onto her, its fangs snapping at her neck, and Altena screams.

There's a flash– no, fire. The wolf is suddenly aflame, Aurelia holding her candelabra-hands high in victory as she defends Odette. Marie is behind her, waving around a sword three times her size and fending off wolves. They don't move from their spot, gathered around Odette, and Aurelia catches Altena's gaze and snaps, "Get out of here before she has to endure any more of this."

Altena rides through the gates and stays there, just beyond them, watching until Odette can stagger away toward the castle again and the wolves vanish. She turns back only once, touching a hand to a scratch across her upper lip, and Altena sucks in a deep breath and waits.

She doesn't ride away until Odette is inside; but she doesn't see when Odette emerges again, in a raised balcony, watching her retreat until she's long, long gone


	5. Chapter 5

Our stories diverge in this most unfortunate of times, Altena riding back to the city and Odette sequestered in the west wing again. I could bore you with details of Altena's overnight journey back to the city, how she's surprised to see how many people greet her, how she's surprised at how trapped she still feels. I could bore you with hours spent watching a rose lose its color and Odette refusing to speak to anyone who knocks at her door.

Instead, I'll take you to Laurent's sharp-eyed smile, even in illness, when Altena arrives at his quarters. "I'm sorry I was away for so long," Altena says, blinking at Laurent with marked horror. He looks worse now than he had in the mirror, his skin sallow and loose and his body shivering uncontrollably. "What…happened?"

Laurent gives her a tight smile. "A bit of old magic, taking its toll. I will die soon, I'm afraid. I'm glad you're here." He doesn't ask where Altena had been, and Altena doesn't offer any answers. She kneels beside Laurent instead and presses compresses to his forehead, helps him sit and eat and quietly suppresses dozens of questions of her own.

Laurent doesn't explain to her why he'd needed her; but after hours of uncertainty, Altena's beginning to think that he doesn't know, either. He looks at Altena expectantly, as though there are answers within her he can't find, and Altena finally blurts out, late in the afternoon, "Do you have any family?"

Laurent stares at her, his lips pursed. Altena stumbles over her words. "I mean, because if you do, they should be here if you– right?"

"No," Laurent says flatly. "I no longer have family." He rests a hand on Altena's, but his smile doesn't meet his eyes. "You're the closest thing to a daughter that I have." Altena swallows. When Laurent changes the subject, she gladly accepts the reprieve.

Across the village, through the forest and up past a tall gate guarded by wolves, Odette is brooding in silence, a hand splayed over the bell jar as she stares at Altena and Laurent behind the spiderweb patterns of her now-shattered mirror.

"You're not going to find any answers by staring at them," says a gentle voice from the door.

Odette's voice is rough. "I said I wasn't to be disturbed. What the hell are you doing here?"

It isn't Aurelia or Marie. It's someone she hasn't spoken to in decades, a teacup hopping behind her. "Bringing you tea," Cece says. "Come on, up this way," she coaxes the teacup, and they bump around the room until Cece is sitting on the table beside the bell jar.

Odette stares blankly at her. Cece murmurs, "I was very young when we were first cursed. I was…so hurt, at first, when you wouldn't even acknowledge me. But in time, I understood." She laughs quietly. "I was so spoiled. I was more concerned about not getting my way with you than I was…being a teapot."

Odette sneers down at her. "Is this supposed to make me fond of you?" She regresses around Cece, can feel the anger that had accompanied her when she'd been just a heartbroken girl in a prison built by Cece's negligence. "Do you think I want to hear this right now, after I've… I've…" She sucks in a long, shuddering breath. "Why are you here, Cece?"

There's still something of that innocent-eyed girl in Cece, even now. "I'm here to tell you that it's okay. That we understand why you let her go."

"You understand nothing." Odette flings the words at her in fury, her breath shallow and broken. "You think you have some great insight into me because you know my story? Because you saw– you saw me with– Al-tena–" The name escapes her lips like a groan of defeat, like a sob that lodges in her throat and stays there, and Odette presses three fingers to a spot just above her eye in an attempt to keep her balanced. "She was our only chance at a savior. Do you think I don't know that? Do you think I don't know that I sealed all of our fates by sending her away?"

"I think you underestimate how much we value what you value. And none of us can be angry that you sent her away."

"Why? Why aren't you furious? Why did Aurelia and Marie help me?" Odette demands, her voice quivering more and more. She feels again like a girl sobbing on the ground of a castle, alone and bewildered and lost.

"Because we love you. And you love her," Cece says gently, and Odette cries in loud, heaving

bursts, sliding from her chair to sit on the ground so she can curl her body up against her knees and cry without the wolves' attacks hurting even more. Cece moves beside her, crooning soft words that Odette doesn't hear, and Odette weeps into her knees for Altena , gone forever.

"There's something else," Cece says after a minute, her eyes downcast as though awaiting Odette's fury.

Odette shakes her head, hopeless and still wiping at tears. "How can there be anything else?"

Cece takes a deep breath. "It's about Mireille," she says, and Odette's eyes grow dimmer still.

Meanwhile, in the city, evening is beginning to fall on the peaceful village and Altena is standing on a bridge that she'd once seen from a castle turret. If she squints, she can see something gleaming between the hills that might be a castle. She can't say for sure, nor can she imagine that a woman or a girl standing at that turret might know that she's standing there.

The thought of it makes her unconscionably lonely, even in this village full of people who know her name. Tears prick at her eyes and she blinks them back before they can emerge.

Home isn't what she remembers it being. Home now feels more like flower picking in an orchard with a little girl and her mother; like bedtime reading in the library and dark eyes that gleam with promise. Home is the thumping of her heart when Odette smiles or Mireille grabs her hand.

She's never felt the lure of freedom like this before, where freedom might mean a castle guarded by wolves where she doesn't want to run at all. She's never ached for anything this badly– like a physical need, desperate hunger for her family, the only she's ever had. How long had she been in the castle? Two months? Maybe three? And yet, it's enough to have transformed her existence into blinding color, into a world where she has a place in her heart for hope and…

And…

She squeezes her eyes shut; imagines, for a moment, that she's standing in the ballroom as Mireille dances with Odette; imagines, for a moment, fighting with Odette with biting comments and flashing eyes and feeling so alive; imagines, for a moment, a world that had stopped turning when they'd all danced together.

She knows, incontrovertibly, that she will return to them. She'd thought– maybe, it had all just been a reaction to being trapped in close quarters. Maybe she's fallen so deep because Odette is everything and how could she not be consumed by everything when it's so near? But she's been away for a day now and she can't breathe, overwhelmed with grief and loss as though she'd been dealt the worst blow in a life in which she'd only known loss.

"Altena!" The voice is unpleasantly familiar, dragging her from a castle hours away to the present. She'd nearly forgotten Vincent entirely during her time away from the city, and she'd been happier for it. He catches her elbow with his hook. "My fiancée, back with me again."

He moves in as though he might kiss her cheek and she wrenches her arm free of his hook, elbowing him in the gut in the process. "Same old ," he gasps out, grimacing.

"Don't touch me," she says stiffly, turning away. The sun is gone by now, the gleam that could have been the castle indistinguishable from the mountains, and she feels nothing but grief for what she's left behind.

Vincent scowls at her. "Laurent requests your presence in his quarters," he says, his voice no longer genial or playful. "I would refrain from making him wait."

Altena almost says something rude, but contains herself. She climbs into Vincent's carriage without a word, staring out at the town around her and wondering what acerbic comments Odette might have had for Vincent.

Thoughts of Odette weigh down her heart and dampen her eyes, and she swallows and lets herself dream, just a bit, of what freedom might look like for them.

Soon. Soon, she's going to find a way to save Odette. She just has to find out what it is that she can do for Laurent. She exits the carriage and climbs up the staircase, past a distracted guard and into Laurent's quarters when she hears the doctor's voice and hesitates outside the bedroom. "I'm only giving you the facts," the doctor says patiently.

"The facts are absurd. You're insisting that my life-force is being drained by one tiny curse, cast decades ago?" Laurent says disbelievingly.

"One tiny curse," the doctor repeats, and lets out a wild cackle. "Twenty-eight years of sustained

power! I warned you when you began that it would have consequences. No magic as great as that you cast around Odette wouldn't."

Altena freezes, flattening herself against the wall as her stomach drops. Laurent is speaking again, her voice strident. "I won't break that curse. Better I die than Odette is freed after her insolence." He sounds firm, still coldly furious with his wife, and Altena's bright hope begins to dim.

"You can't break the curse," the doctor corrects him. "Not anymore. But there is another way," he says sleekly.

"I'm listening."

The doctor clears his throat, his voice lowering to nearly a whisper. Altena leans in, holding her breath. "Pluck the rose that centers the curse," he says. "Pluck it and it will kill your wife and you will live forever in her place."

"No," Altena says, horrified, and it's only when the room falls silent that she realizes she's moved forward instinctively, into the doorway with her fists clenched. Neither Laurent nor the doctor looks surprised. "You wouldn't."

"Your loyalty is to me, not Odette," Laurent says coolly. He's drawn himself up in a way that counteracts the frailty of illness, that gives him an imperious stance that demands obedience. "Don't tell me that barely a couple of months have changed that."

"You imprisoned Odette," Altena says, all guilt and anger and fear.

"I freed you," Laurent counters. "Would you forget that over a family spat you have no business interfering in?"

They've moved quickly from You're the closest thing to a daughter I have, haven't they? And Altena feels the rejection and stands tall, all but swept away if not for her determination to protect Odette. She says, "I can't let you hurt Odette," and turns, ready to flee back to the castle, when she comes face-to-face with another man waiting patiently behind her.

"I was so hoping you wouldn't say that," Laurent says grimly, and Vincent slams his hook against Altena's skull.

As Altena is dragged beneath Laurent's estate, into dungeons as grubby and unpleasant as the ones she'd spent years in as a teenager, Odette remains in her tower. She watches Mireille in her mirror instead of Altena and with rising concern, until she can't see even her without bitter despair overtaking her.

Marie is the only one who's been allowed into the west wing since Cece had left. "Aurelia wanted to come," she murmurs when she brings up Odette's dinner. "She's worried about you."

"She's angry at me," Odette deduces, and Marie winces.

"No. She…doesn't understand, I think. You know she has a complex relationship with Laurent. She can't quite grasp why you would let Altena go to him."

Odette sits forward in her chair, stabbing dully at her lettuce with a fork. "I couldn't force or manipulate Altena into staying where she isn't free. I won't have her resent me or– or hate me…" She stares at the dusty wall opposite her. "This is what she wanted. Our curse isn't her burden to bear."

"It shouldn't be yours, either," Marie says gently.

"But it is."

"It is." Marie takes her tray and leaves the room reluctantly, glancing back at Odette as though she might say something more. But she doesn't. Marie is wiser than any of the others ever could be.

Odette doesn't light a lamp when the dark comes. Once, she'd kept the west wing as a sanctuary; but as the years have passed, her pain has been less about that loss of husband and more about the loss of freedom– for herself and for her daughter and for the other people here she cares most about.

And then Altena had stepped into the room with her, their hands locked, and Odette had been almost breathless at the promise of a future, of someone she'd have happily spent the rest of eternity beside. And somehow her brief visit has suffused the walls and air and light in the west

wing, brought it to life for the first time in twenty-eight years, and Odette can't escape from any of it anymore.

Altena is light, and without her, Odette sits in darkness.

It's late, her eyes nearly drifting closed as she sees a glint of light flickering up from the stairs. No one would dare come up here now, not without her express permission. Even Cece knows better now. Unless…

Her heart leaps with sudden hope and she can feel every heartbeat in time with the creaking on the stairs. Thud. Creak. Thud. Creak. It can't be…

She'd promised she'd be back but Odette hadn't dared believe…

Odette rises, gripped with sudden hope, and she nearly runs to the stairs, to see who could be approaching. It's been two days and she's already bereft, already helpless with need and grief. She'd never imagined that anyone who'd left the castle would return.

Thud. Creak. Thud. Creak. Thud. Creak. "Altena?" she breathes, and the lantern-bearer turns the final round of steps at last.

Odette can see his face flickering in the orange light, eyes somber and his gait weak and unsteady. "Hello, darling," Laurent says, his pursed smile barely visible in the light of her lantern.

Thud.

"Let me out of here!" Altena shouts. "Let me out!" No one responds, if anyone can hear her at all. She sinks to the ground, her fists clenched and her heart racing.

She's alone in Laurent's dungeons, without even a guard to bribe or a fellow prisoner for company. If she'd thought the castle had been a prison, it's nothing in comparison with this place in the dank blackness of a place forgotten by time. "Hey!" she shouts again, and her voice is as swallowed by the dark as everything else around her.

She leans back against the wall, feeling the desperation threaten to overwhelm her. Odette's in danger, and Altena's locked up hours away. Laurent's going to kill Odette. She falls forward again, scrabbling at the bars of her cell and the walls and hacking helplessly at packed dirt with a sliver of stone.

Odette can't die. She can't. Altena refuses to live in a world without Odette ever again. "Augh!" she shouts again, louder and furious. "Laurent! Doctor! Vincent! Let me out!"

"Ah, she summons her hero at last," comes the oily voice from the darkness, and Vincent saunters into view.

Altena nearly cries with relief. "Vincent. Dammit, I don't think I've ever been so happy to see you before." He grins down at her, and she takes in a breath, feeling hope rise in her stomach. "Just let me out of here. I swear, I'll never come back and Laurent will never know it's you–"

"And what can you give me in return?" Vincent says, his eyes lecherous as always. "I think I have everything I want right here." He takes a step forward, fumbling for the keys to the dungeon, and Altena thinks that there may yet be something worse than being alone.

She reaches for a sharp stone, tucks it between her fingers as she crouches in wait, and Vincent says softly, "All that time running from me and rejecting me, and for what? This prison for the rest of your life? A disgraced bitch of a queen?"

"She's not the one who has to lock up a woman to get her to talk to him," Altena shoots back, wary but unafraid. "You're pathetic, Vincent."

He reacts in a flash, slides his hook into the cell to slam it against her cheek, and Altena tastes blood and spits it at his feet. "I'll kill you," he snarls out. "I'll kill you and–"

There's a sound like a thump, something hard against something soft, and Vincent slumps to the floor without another word. A smaller figure behind him says, still staring down a Vincent as though she can't believe that she'd felled him, "Don't talk about my mother like that."

"Mireille!" Altena does cry now, tears of relief cascading down her cheeks as the tension of the past few minutes is gone, just like that. "Mireille, how are you here?"

Vincent is still stirring, not quite out cold, and Mireille says, "There's no time. Let's get out of here." She produces the keys and unlocks the door swiftly, and Altena takes her hand and follows her from the cell. She treads on Vincent's good hand with savage satisfaction as they flee the hallway.

"Tell me," Altena demands as Mireille leads her back the way they'd come. "Where's your mother?"

"Home." Mireille's face falls. "I just…I wanted to make sure you'd come back, okay? So I followed you out of the castle and then it took me a whole day to make it through the woods! I didn't have a horse!" She's breathless as Altena takes the lead on more familiar ground, slipping through Laurent's estate and past guards to the stables. "And I found my way here just in time to see them dragging you into the dungeons. Is my father going to hurt my mom?" She turns to Altena, her eyes fierce and afraid.

"Not if we can help it," Altena assures Mireille, and she can already feel her confidence returning.

Hang in there, Odette, we're coming for you.

There's an old, formal seat built into the wall below the tower window, cobwebbed and dusty from years of neglect. Odette perches at the end of it, her back straight and the bell jar with the rose on her lap as Laurent examines the room. "You've broken my gift to you," he says, disapproving as he slides his fingers across the remaining shards of the mirror.

"Gift," Odette repeats evenly.

"Of course."

"You wanted me to see what I could never have again." Freedom, and Laurent has always been so effective at manipulating that pain to a peak.

Laurent spares her a thin-lipped smile. "I wanted you to have power," he corrects her. He's sliced open one finger on the shattered glass, and it bleeds and crusts over without the tiny bit of magic that Laurent would normally use to heal it. Odette stares at it with blank eyes.

Laurent says, "I suppose you must have guessed why I'm here."

"Altena sent you." It comes out too hopeful, too uncertain, and Odette knows it's weakness even before Laurent's eyes glimmer with danger.

"Altena," he repeats. "My deputy, Altena ?" He laughs, light and unbothered, and Odette is afraid. "Oh dear, no. I would imagine she'd be the last one to have encouraged me to come here." He tilts her head, a proprietary hand squeezing Odette's shoulder.

"What…" He manipulates. Your husband will lie to you. "What do you mean?" she asks anyway.

"I came because I'm dying, Odette," Laurent says, sitting down beside Odette with frail hands folded on his lap. "Until now, Altena would have received quite a bit of my holdings and my little kingdom. Yet…You are my wife," he says, and reaches out to squeeze Odette's knee. "I want nothing more than to make amends."

Odette still sits stiffly, her mind racing. Laurent must be lying about Altena. There's no way that Altena had– Laurent had given Altena a motive almost carelessly, a reason for Odette to distrust her. Laurent doesn't want to make amends. "Then set me free," Odette challenges, her voice already hoarse and wavering. "If you want to make amends, let me leave this castle."

"I've come here to do exactly that," Laurent says serenely. He lays her hand over the bell jar. Odette jerks it away from his touch, her heart cold and brittle and ready to crack like the mirror on the wall. "My dear Odette," Laurent says, and after twenty-eight years, the disapproval in his voice is still enough to make Odette quail. "I'm only trying to help."

"Where is Altena?" Odette demands, fingers pressed against the glass of the bell jar as though to find an anchor in it. Her fingers slide instead, smudging smooth glass as Laurent looks on.

"Altena?" Laurent smiles, tight and sharp. "Last I saw her, she was reuniting with her beloved fiancé."

The ice of her heart shatters in a bang hard enough to have her chest reeling as though it's been struck. She can feel slivers digging through her skin, puncturing her heart and lungs and stomach, and in helpless defense, her skin hardens and hardens until she feels nothing at all. "Of course," she says, and her hands slip from the bell jar in defeat.

Laurent catches it before it can fall.

It's said that the world can change in a split second, to which I say that the world changes every second, and each incremental alteration redefines it as we know of it. But for an individual, perhaps, change can come with only a few moments such as this one:

In the dungeons, Vincent picks himself up and runs to the stairs, bellowing shouts to rally the army of guards that Laurent pays handsomely for their support. "We must do everything in our power to stop Altena!" he shouts, his purpling face a testament, most of all, to the impressive ability of Laurent's army to maintain a straight face.

In the woods, Mireille is perched on a horse with Altena behind her, urging their mount forward into the dark. There's a roar of an army just beginning to form behind them, and their horse bolts as Altena struggles to keep it moving forward but Vincent's men take the lead.

And in the highest tower of the west wing of Odette's castle, Laurent says gently, "I never should have cast the curse."

Odette's mind is still working at a frenetic pace, running through a dozen instances when Altena could have revealed– a fiancé? and there'd been fingers brushing against the skin of her thigh and hands on her under the apple trees and stay with me, how could Altena have been in love with a man she'd never spoken of, hadn't Altena said she'd had no one at all– and she can feel every last bit of her so thoroughly worn through until she's nothing at all. And then Laurent speaks and Odette has no defenses at all.

"But you did," Odette says, her voice dull. "It doesn't suit you to feign regret now to assuage your conscience."

"No," Laurent agrees. "I prefer action." His eyes are on the rose in the bell jar, and Odette feels an unease at that that she can't name. "And it's time I told you the one true way to break the curse."

I'll give you a moment to gasp in dawning horror as we swing back to Altena, who's being outridden by Vincent's army and spitting curses at them that have Mireille say, admonishing, "Altena."

"Cover your ears. Don't tell your mom about this." Altena hunches down, tugging at her reins, and reconsiders. "You know what? Tell her. I'd rather have her kick my ass than…" She can't finish her sentence.

Mireille bobs her head, shivering just a bit in the cold. Altena rides forward, exhaling when she finally reaches the castle. The white wolves lie on the ground before them, bleeding from protruding arrows and sword wounds, and Mireille gapes as three men at the front of the castle ride toward them.

Altena shoves her. "Go! Run to the orchard and hide! I'll take care of this!"

And Mireille obeys, for once in her life.

Inside, Vincent has been stymied by a clock wielding a sword around as though she's one of the best fighters in the world. Above her on the stairs, a candelabra hurls vicious green fireballs at their attackers, and a teapot calls forth the other objects in the room to resist the invasion.

Altena hurtles into the castle and nearly gets nicked by a fireball. "Altena?" Aurelia says disbelievingly. "You're back?"

"Where is she? Where's Odette?" Altena asks frantically.

"She hasn't left the west wing in days," Cece calls out, and every other defender of the castle stares at her in horror at the revelation in front of their invading forces.

Vincent wrenches himself from his battle with Marie and makes a mad dash for the western stairs, and Altena follows, Marie at her heels. "Odette will set him on fire," she assures Altena, though she sounds uncertain about it. "I don't know where this army came from, but–"

"Laurent," Altena says grimly, racing down the hall after Vincent. "Laurent's already here."

I hope you've finished your gasp of dawning horror, because it's time to discover that, yes, Laurent's

scheme is exactly as atrocious as it had seemed. We return to a very dubious Odette. "After all this time…you're telling me that just plucking the final petal from the rose would have broken the curse?"

Laurent inclines his head. "I only wish I'd told you when we had more time together." He slides a hand through Odette's hair, the affection stilted but just enough that it has a Odette who's lost everything– her son, free from her castle at last; twenty-eight years, all but gone; a woman she loves who will never return to her– lean into the embrace.

Below them, there are sounds of battle and shouts of dismay, but Odette hears none of it.

Altena catches up to Vincent at last, wielding her sword with grace as he laughs and deflects every blow. "Did you think it would be that easy?" he mocks, parrying and driving her back toward the entrance to the west wing. The room that had once been Odette's cottage with her stable boy is in shambles; each carefully preserved bit of the past turned to broken clay and battered furniture with every moment the fight continues. "Did you think you could reach your queen in some daring rescue when I'm still here?"

"You were taken down by a ten-year-old," Altena scoffs, bobbing on the couch cushions and slamming her sword down on him from above.

As Laurent murmurs promises to her daughter– each of them a half-truth, because those are so much more effective than mere lies– and Odette takes them in in silence, starved for human connection as she's been for days, Altena dodges Vincent's flurry of attacks and holds steady as he bears down, closer and closer until their faces are just inches away, behind their crossed swords. "I'll kill you," Vincent snarls, and his hook flashes out with renewed speed–

A sword pierces him from behind, tilting upward as though its bearer is particularly small. "A dishonorable death," Marie says, wrinkling her nose and wiggling her sword free as Vincent chokes and flies toward a window, crashing through it and over the edge of the castle wall. "But he didn't seem to have much honor to begin with." Altena gapes, a bit disappointed at not getting to inflict the final blow, and Marie pokes her with one of her clock hands. "Go. Help Odette. I'll hold the line."

Odette has the rose in her hand, the stem between two fingers as she stares at the half-detached petal that remains. Laurent beams at her. "I've been waiting for this moment for so long," he murmurs.

"The curse broken?"

"Forgiveness," Laurent corrects her, and something in Odette's shattered heart still yearns for the warmth that that word promises. "I never wanted our last time together to be marred by the bitterness of the past."

"Our last time together," Odette repeats, frowning at the rose. "Then you think…" She looks up, tense again and afraid of even more loss. "I'm not going anywhere," she promises. "I'll stay by your side for as long as this sickness lasts."

"You're too good to me, darling," Laurent murmurs, pressing a kiss to Odette's cheek. "Now, the petal. We have no time to lose."

"Yes." Odette examines the rose again, still with that uncertainty in her eyes. Now that freedom feels as though it's in her grasp, she's hesitating. It's too good to be true, Laurent reaching out and an end to this damnable curse and a future ahead of her, and she sucks in a deep breath and places her fingers on the petal–

"No!" comes the cry from the doorway, and Odette had been so absorbed in the rose that she hadn't heard Altena approaching until that moment. Altena is breathing hard, leaning against her sword, her free hand outstretched. "Odette," Altena breathes, and days of tension and fear and loss all fade away when their eyes lock.

"Altena," Odette says shakily, and she can't believe any of the poison that her husband ad poured into her ears when Altena is standing before her with her eyes gleaming with relief and bare affection.

"Do it," Laurent says forcefully. "Do it now, before she can–"

"He's lying to you," Altena grinds out, glaring at Laurent. "Whatever he says is a lie. He's trying to kill you!" she snaps, taking a step forward, and Odette's fingers freeze on the petal of the rose.

"Laurent," Odette says. "Is this true?" She doesn't need to ask it but she still does, desperately dreaming for a moment– desperate to hold onto someone who has only caused her pain in the past, desperate to have not been so deceived so coldly.

Laurent says, eyes flickering toward Altena with her sword and Odette still bearing the rose, "Darling, everything I've done for you has been for our good. If you'd only understand that–"

Odette stands, backs away from him in horror, and Laurent sighs, "I truly didn't want it to end like this," and the rose disappears in a puff of pink energy and reappears in his hands.

"No," Altena says, eyes wide, and she races forward, across the small room–

–It's too late. Laurent plucks the final petal from the rose.

Odette trembles, seizes up, reaches out for Altena and then falls to the ground, still twitching, and Laurent laughs as magic roars up around him and envelops him in its glowing light. It's stronger than anything Altena's ever seen, unstoppable and terrible and Altena can only gape at it for an instant before she's dropping down to hold Odette in her arms. "Odette! Odette!"

There's no answer. Odette is still twitching and Laurent is shouting something victorious and Altena crouches over Odette, tears falling freely from her face. "Oh, oh no– Odette. Odette, no, come back to me, please, Odette–" The idea of a world without Odette is as foreign as a home is to Altena, as difficult to conceive of or accept at all. "Odette, wake up, oh, fuck–"

The cloud of magic is coalescing around Laurent, and Altena can hear the threats now past the laughter, silky and directed at her. Altena can't even see Laurent through her blurred eyes, and she feels a hot blast of magic nearby–

And then Cece's voice, and Aurelia's, and Marie's and Mireille's and Laurent is distracted. Altena crouches over Odette, barely aware of anything else happening around her. "Odette, Odette, Odette," she chants, over and over, as though she can somehow wake her with only her name. "Please, Odette– I can't–" She inhales a sobbing breath. "I just found you," she chokes out. "I can't lose you."

But Odette's skin has taken on an unnatural pallor, and even the twitching has ceased. She lies in stillness on the ground, looking for all the world like she's only asleep, and Altena's forehead drops to Odette's, her tears wet and glistening against Odette's skin. Mireille is crying out something from the doorway, still blocked by Laurent, and Altena can't hear any of it– can't hear anything but the deafening silence where Odette's heartbeat should be.

"I just found you," she whispers again, into the silence. "Odette, please, don't…" She's never felt this sort of loss before, this absolute despair that comes with loving and losing– not when she'd

never loved like this before. She can't imagine leaving this spot, not until Laurent blows her apart. She can't imagine ever returning to a world in which Odette isn't at its epicenter, and she refuses to…to…

She raises her head and falls forward again, unable to support her own weight when she feels this weak, and she presses her lips against Odette's forehead instead. "I love you," she murmurs against her skin. "I love you, Odette, you can't–"

Something surges at the point where her lips touch Odette's skin, something multicolored and powerful and…magical? Altena looks up, finally startled from her Odette-induced stupor by the magic coursing through her, and she sees Mireille's beaming face first. "You did it!" she says, and Laurent screams again, loud and furious as the magic pours from him as quickly as it had come.

"You really did it," says the woman beside Mireille in wonder, reaching up to touch her own face with the hand that isn't on her sword. "We're–"

The redhead beside her lets out a whoops of joy and kisses her square on the lips, and Marie– it must be Marie and Aurelia, what is happening– looks startled and amused and doesn't push her away. Mireille is still grinning, grinning like a girl who hasn't just lost her mother, and Altena can't see whatever's going on there when Odette is…

Odette is…

Odette is smiling, her eyes flickering open, and Altena gasps out a choked sob. "You broke the curse," Odette murmurs, her voice hoarse and worn. "Altena, we're…"

And the most important thing about this moment is Odette, alive and well again, but somehow Altena can only manage a stupid, "You're in love with me, too?"

"Altena," Odette sighs, her eyes shining, and she tugs Altena back down to her lips for a proper, real kiss that has Altena's head spinning and her heart aflame with warmth and hope and wonder.


	6. Chapter 6

You might not expect moments of tension after the great final kiss, the curtains ready to fall and our players ready to return to the ever-promised happily ever after. But today we have one; Altena sitting on the grand staircase, drumming her fingers against her knees, Mireille curled up beside her. "It's going to be okay," she says with conviction. She smiles, but it's uncertain. "What…what do you think comes next?" "You're happy," Altena promises. "You and your mother are happy." She glances once toward the room off the side of the ballroom, where Odette, Aurelia, and Marie had vanished nearly an hour before with Laurent. Altena has no way of knowing what their plans are– if Laurent might still sabotage them or if he has kept his magic, after all. Altena and Mireille have been kept in the dark, and Altena can only stare at the still-empty hallway in silence. "Mireille," a gentle voice says from behind them. It's Cece, her kind eyes still somehow the same eyes that had been on the teapot. Now, though, she crouches down and suggests, "Why don't we go out to the orchards? There are still shooting stars out from the curse breaking." Knowing eyes land on Altena's. "And Altena, you're welcome to join us. I suspect Odette will be in there for a while more." Mireille frowns at her, rising with reluctance. "Don't you have a whole kingdom to get back to?" "Eventually," Cece says, wincing. "I've been speaking to the soldiers who've remained in the castle grounds. A neighboring king took my kingdom after the power struggle and installed his son there. I've got my work cut out for me." (There is a story there, a false prince stumbling through the politics of the kingdom, a lost princess returned to bedlam, an unexpected connection; but these are tales for another day.) She smiles again. "Come, Mireille. Take a breath. You deserve it." Mireille looks to Altena for approval. Altena shrugs, biting her lip, and follows after them. She hadn't wanted to leave Odette alone with Laurent at all, but Odette had insisted. There's a furtive sort of fear when Altena is anywhere near Laurent, and Altena remembers what had happened to the last one that Odette had loved when she'd been in Laurent's vicinity. For her part, Altena can only think of Laurent tearing the petal from the rose; and she thinks that even without his magic, Laurent is a formidable foe. Mireille slides her hand into hers in quiet solidarity as they walk after Cece, and when she smiles at her, she relaxes a hair. "We're free," she says, blinking out at the orchards. Neither of them has stepped out of the castle again since the curse had broken, waiting for Odette and for everything to be settled, but the castle is emptying out, formerly cursed objects fleeing their prison with wonder. "Do you think we'll still live here now?"  
We is fluid to her, easy acceptance of Altena as a part of her family, and she wraps an arm around her shoulders with indescribable fondness. "We'll live wherever you and Odette decide to live." Mireille's brow furrows. "What about you?" Altena shrugs. "I'll just…" She doesn't care where she is anymore, castle or town or a hut in the woods, not as long as she has this family with her. "I'll be with you," she says simply, and Mireille's head falls to her shoulder, her arm tight around her waist. Across the castle, another woman longs to be with them both, but she stands strong and alone as she makes her final decisions. "Exile,Laurent," she says at last. "I don't want to see you again." "If you ever come back into our lives…" Aurelia's hands light up with emerald fire. Laurent sneers at her, at Odette, at Marie safe behind them with her sword drawn. Perhaps she'd be better off dead and far from our heroes, but no one in that room is willing to deal the killing blow. Odette stands secure and tall, her allies around her, and Laurent says, "You're making a mistake," with so much scorn that Odette nearly quails. Marie lays a calm hand on Odette's shoulder and Odette remembers herself. "I don't think so," she says. "You've done your worst to me and Mireille,Laurent. I'm not afraid of you anymore." A wistful part of her still dreams of reconciliation, someday, of the closure she'll never truly have with her husband. Laurent is old and trembling, no longer with the magic that would have protected him from aging any more. And Odette hesitates, that wistful voice still yearning for a man who had caused her nothing but pain. She reaches out and touches Laurent's cheek with the backs of her knuckles, watching Mireille's father's eyes flicker shut at the contact. "For what you've done for Altena," she says finally, and Laurent scoffs and glowers at her. "I'll have a carriage drawn for you. You will live the remainder of your life in comfort," she promises, and turns away from him to the door. "Goodbye,Laurent ." Aurelia says something in a low tone to Laurent, still lounging in front of the door with Marie. Odette exits the room and finds a soldier milling about in the courtyard. They've been made friendly with Laurent's defeat, and she gives him strict instructions about where to take Laurent. And then, finally, finally, she can find her daughter and her…her true love, she thinks, and I swear to you that you've never seen Odette smile as brightly as she does in that moment, gazing out through iron gates and thinking of her family. No. No, a moment later, it's even brighter, as Mireille emerges from the side of the house and leaps into her arms. "Mama!"  
"Mireille!" she exclaims, and they're spinning in a circle, exhilarated and breathless and alive. The dimness that suffuses her time with Laurent is swept aside by the moonlight, by her daughter's eyes glowing as she looks up at her, and she inhales fresh, free air and runs a hand through her hair. She hasn't stepped through the iron gates yet, and she considers it now but it doesn't feel quite right just like this. "Where is Altena?" Mireille shrugs. "She went upstairs a few minutes ago." She looks perturbed. "She seemed distracted. Maybe in a good way? We were talking about what we're going to do next and she just…said she had to go. I don't know where she went." "I do." Odette squeezes her shoulder. "I'll be right back, all right?" Mireille bobs her head. She, too, lingers near the gate, not ready to leave. It's been years of these two in their tight little family, isolated from the world. The greatest fairytales begin with one: alone; and then end with two, three, four: a family. This tale had begun with two, Mireille and Odette's paths entwined in their castle, and now that it's time to go, something holds them back. Upstairs, Altena who had thought only of freedom is locked away again, back to the stone wall of her turret with her knees up and her eyes blank on the pages of the book open against her legs. And, my dear reader, I can't describe to you what's whirling through her head, because she couldn't, either. Not at this pivotal moment, when a way out finally appears within all their grasps. Not when they're finally ready for happily ever after. She doesn't move when there's a light knocking at the door to the turret, and Odette steps into the room and slides down onto the floor beside her. A tentative arm slips around Altena's waist, Odette laying her head against her shoulders. Altena's lips curl upward, the turmoil within her mind quieting at last.. "Hi," she murmurs, wrapping her own arm around Odette to tuck her into her embrace. "I was beginning to think you'd never leave that room." Odette sighs, stretching out her legs on the floor and shifting to lean closer to Altena. "My husband has no more magic. I don't think I want to hurt him, but I want him gone from my and Mireille's life." She hesitates. "He hasn't left yet. If you want to–" "I don't," Altena says quickly. "I mean…" She laughs wryly. "I think my debt to Laurent was repaid a long time ago, but I would have stayed forever if he hadn't tried to kill you and lock me up indefinitely. Let him go." "Maybe someday…" Odette says uncertainly. Her admission is barely a whisper, a secret desire that she can't tamp down even now when it shames her.  
Perhaps there's a sort of longing to it that can't be described or understood by anyone but those who have spent their lives unloved. Even a girl who'd been so shattered by her husband– locked in cages long before a castle and always denied what she'd yearned for– even that girl who still dreams of fairytales hopes furtively for one where Mireille might have a father who loves her. And Altena, child of no one but the wind that rushes unfettered through the world, squeezes the skin of her hip gently in understanding. "Maybe someday," she murmurs, brushing her lips to Odette's temple for a moment. Odette sighs happily and shifts closer still to Altena, peering down at the book on her lap. "Althea and Johari again?" Altena's shoulders rise and fall. "I fell asleep when you were reading it to Mireille, remember? I never got to read the end." "It's the same ending as always," Odette says, turning the pages to show Altena the dramatic kiss on the final page. "And they lived happily ever after." Altena is tentative, unsure, afraid. "What does that mean?" she wonders, her voice unsteady. "How is happily ever after just…a state of being? It doesn't guarantee–" "Altena," Odette whispers, and in that moment she finally understands what it is that's plaguing Altena so. "Do you want to know what my happily ever after looks like?" Altena bobs her head, still so tense that Odette has to uncurl Altena's fingers from her hip and lace them into her own. "I want to see the world with you and Mireille," she says, her eyes distant, and Altena's fingers are less rigid at the you. "I want to travel and ride again and learn about the world without anyone's hands holding me back by the wrists." She pulls away and stands, staring out from the turret to the river that flows to the city. Altena follows, tucking her book under her arm. "And when I've seen enough," Odette says, her eyes distant, "I want to come back home to my castle with my family." Altena starts, glancing over at Odette as her heart warms and warms. "You want to come back here?" Odette's eyes are wistful instead of pained, and Altena doesn't understand. "I thought this was your prison." "It was." The wind is light around them, these two women who have known too many years of isolation and finally found something real beyond it. When you look at them now, perhaps, you might see just a hint of the magic that whirls around them, no longer a curse or spell but the quiet freedom of hope. "It's also the place where I…where I raised my daughter and found so many people I…and…" Odette's voice is tender, her heart at peace. "It's the place where I fell in love with you." Altena's breath catches in her throat and she manages, "Oh," as Odette smiles dazzlingly at her. "Okay, then."  
They stand in silence for a moment, Odette's smile still bright and gleaming and Altena's eyes wide with unspoken emotion. Neither of them can tear their gazes apart, and Odette finally asks carefully, "And you? What does your happily ever after look like?" Is there really an answer that isn't clearly apparent in this tale, in Altena's eyes, in every motion of fate and every battle against it? "You," Altena says, helpless, and Odette moves forward, captures Altena's face in her hands, and kisses her fiercely. There are hands on hips and backs and sliding through travel clothing worn out by wolves and prisons. There's Altena gasping into Odette's mouth as her hands trace the curves of Odette's skin; as Odette digs her fingers into Altena's sides and bites the slope of her jaw and Altena sucks hard at Odette's pulse point until Odette gasps as well. There are fumbling hands that slide everywhere, that see clothes as nothing more than barriers, there are rolling hills within their breathless movements that rise and rise and rise until they fall, one then the other, damp foreheads dropping together and a fervent kiss placed to a bare shoulder as Odette strokes Altena one last time. "We should, um…" Altena bites her lip, then Odette's for good measure. "Get cleaned up." "Of course," Odette says agreeably, and they slip from the turret together, too lost in each other to notice the absolutely filthy-smug expression on Aurelia's face as they stroll past her to the baths. (Between you and me, she's just collected quite the debt from Marie over a certain wager.) The obligatory denouement is upon us, just hours after the true love's kiss that spells an ending in every fairytale. It's sunrise, a new day after a never-ending night, and the world around the castle is orange with promise. Mireille has fallen asleep in the grass where wolves once roamed and Aurelia is gleeful on the other side of the gate, waving around a sword with the same wildness as she had her candlesticks, once upon a time. Marie ducks and winces and spars with her, making a futile attempt to bring some dignity back to their sparring session. And then she pauses, distracted, and Aurelia follows her gaze to the front doors. Her eyebrow quirks, and she might have said about time if we could hear her from our vantage point. Odette has stepped out of the castle doors. Mireille stirs, rises, waiting for her mother. Altena trails behind her, eyes with the same wonder that there is in Odette's (though hers are focused more on the woman in front of her than on the open gates beyond which Marie and Aurelia remain).  
Odette walks in front of them, brisk step after brisk step, and Mireille and Altena both linger behind her when Odette's businesslike stride falters at the gates. And then she's stepping through the gates, her eyes wide with wonder and a burst of laughter in her throat, and she walks a few more steps before she spins around and spreads her arms and beckons to her daughter and her true love. Mireille breaks into a run and Altena quickens her step, right behind her as she lands in her mother's arms. She's pulled into the embrace as well, the three of them laughing and crying, a tiny bit, as the sun climbs up from the horizon and dawn settles onto a new day. And indeed: after travels and more laughter and tears; after castles and taverns and dragons and ogres; after kisses and hugs and whispered declarations of love that are easier and easier as time passes; after family, free to have all they've ever dreamed of– –after and during each moment that follows our three heroes in each other's arms, they have exactly what they've never dared imagine. My dear reader, I can only wish for you the sort of fairytale that Altena, Odette, and Mireille had found together. And they lived happily ever after.


End file.
